


Place in the Woods

by signifying_nothing



Category: VIXX, 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: American Gothic - Freeform, M/M, Witch!Seokjin, eonnie's famous crossovers, heretic priest!hoseok, kenvi secondary, rapson secondary, shaman!jimin, signis makes shit up, some weird ass shit idk what the fuck i'm doing, sorcerer!namjoon, witch!taehyung
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-12 07:46:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 30
Words: 55,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10485810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/signifying_nothing/pseuds/signifying_nothing
Summary: Yoongi's known about the place in the woods since he was a kid. No one goes there. It's out past the town line, out into the dark woods where the trees grow arms length apart, their branches tangling up into a net to catch sunlight before it ever hits the ground. The place in the woods is a clearing, and it's surrounded in white birch. A ring of white trees, the horizontal lines of dark brown lined up neatly. It's not a bad place, not like the cracked boulder at the top of the hill, the Devils Headstone. It's not a bad place, but it is a place, and Yoongi won't go there.





	1. a ring of birch trees

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Swamp Magic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9311144) by [GinForInk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GinForInk/pseuds/GinForInk). 



> this is pretty heavily (and shamelessly) inspired by the first few chapters of GinForInk's [Swamp Magic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9311144?view_full_work=true); though, being that i am from the Great North Woods, it is a little bit different in theme and setting.  
> regardless that fic is rad and you should definitely read it if you haven't had the chance yet.  
> most of the warnings on this are for future chapters, and i'll tag as i go along.

Yoongi's known about the place in the woods since he was a kid. No one goes there. It's out past the town line, out into the dark woods where the trees grow arms length apart, their branches tangling up into a net to catch sunlight before it ever hits the ground. The place in the woods is a clearing, and it's surrounded in white birch. A ring of white trees, the horizontal lines of dark brown lined up neatly. It's not a bad place, not like the cracked boulder at the top of the hill, the Devils Headstone. It's not a bad place, but it is a _place,_ and Yoongi won't go there.

Hongbin wants to go there.

“This is a bad idea,” Yoongi mutters. Hongbin isn't from around here, came from Virginia when he was ten, and he's an idiot. He just wants to take pictures, it's his passion, and Yoongi loves that about him, he does. They're really good friends, occasional lovers, but sometimes he wishes his flatlander roommate would just _listen_ to him when he says something is a bad idea.

“You're so paranoid,” Hongbin chides, dropping the truck into second gear and powering up the overgrown dirt path that leads up to the place in the woods. “It's gonna be _fine,_ we're gonna be there for all of half an hour n'then we're gonna come home, okay. I promise.”

“Right,” Yoongi mutters, crossing his arms a little tighter, watching the trees grow denser, watching the forest floor get darker, and darker. It's not past two yet, but it feels like six in the evening in November, when it's the beginning of September and the leaves are kissed with red and yellow. Normally they'd be at school right now. If either of them had been smart enough to get into college, but they weren't. Not the universities down in Boston or Portland, not even the ones on the seacoast. Yoongi had shit grades, always had shit grades, and Hongbin just didn't care. He just wanted to take pictures.

 _You're the best model,_ he'd told Yoongi when they moved in together last year, and he'd been taking pictures of him in his towel, his wet hair sticking to his cheeks. _Seriously. You could be wearing a paper bag n'you'd still look like a fucking elf or some shit._ Yoongi didn't read much, but he'd seen the Lord of the Rings movies and he'd punched Hongbin in the shoulder but let him take his pictures. If he got famous for them someday, so be it—maybe he'd get famous, too.

But out here. Out here in the dark of the woods Yoongi shivers with cold and fingers his simple silver cross, his iron bracelets heavy on his wrists. They'd been a gift from a relative when he was a kid, and he remembers something about _protection from faeries,_ but mostly he wears them because he likes the imprinted designs, likes how the iron rings look around his wrists. Likes how Hongbin sometimes uses a carabiner to hook them together and hangs him from tree branches for his more risque photo shoots.

When the two of them had moved in together last year—Hongbin desperate to get away from his abusive mother and Yoongi desperate to get away from his religious parents, he'd been disowned. They'd told him he was moving into a den of sin and his soul was black with devil's taint. Yoongi doesn't really believe in any of that, the devil and such, even though he wears his cross and had dutifully gone to church every Sunday until it got to be too awkward, sitting in the same service with his parents on the other end of the room, hating him.

“Bean, I really think this is a bad id—”

“We're here,” Hongbin says, and Yoongi swallows, slowly looks out the windshield of the truck. There it is, the ring of birch trees. Their leaves are shining yellow, the bark bright white, and Yoongi shivers. The inside of the ring is clear save for small bits of plant life, tiny little oak trees sprouting up from acorns, little ash saplings. No birch saplings though. Yoongi feels something in his gut get cold. The air in the circle shimmers.

“Bean, I don't wanna go in there,”

“C'mon,” Hongbin laughs at him. “Don't be a baby, it's fine! We're only gonna be here a few minutes, I promise. Sides, you look so good! S'a shame not to get pictures of you now.”

Yoongi reaches and punches Hongbin in the side, but climbs out of the truck when Hongbin flashes him that toothy grin he's always so weak to. Hongbin has something in him that makes Yoongi like him, even though he shouldn't. They've... Shared a lot together, the last few years. From Yoongi's first kiss in the dark out in Hongbin's car to the first time they had sex, out in the woods while the rest of their communities teenagers had a roaring party with a bonfire and tailgating and more drinking than Yoongi could ever be comfortable with.

Yoongi climbs out of the truck, and the leaves crunch under his boots. Hongbin is already snapping away, his eye pressed up to the viewfinder of his old Canon. “Do I really gotta take my shirt off,” he sulks, unbuttoning his flannel and shrugging out of it and his vest, laying them on the hood of the truck. He's wearing a pair of buckskin leather pants, rough-made but soft. His brown leather belt keeps them on his hips along with his skinning knife, multi-tool and phone, though he puts his phone on the front seat of the truck, and shifts his other accoutrements to the far sides of his hips, so they aren't visible from the front.

He pulls his shirt up over his head and he can feel Hongbin staring at him, can feel him snapping photographs as he lays the shirt aside and pulls his flannel and vest back on around his shoulders, leaves them open to expose his bare chest. It's too cold to go completely shirtless. It's dark and there's an unnatural chill in everything, like there should be frost in the canyons of the treebark.

“You are so fuckin' gorgeous,” Hongbin says, and Yoongi gives him a weak smile, eyes darting to the ring of birch trees. Hongbin wants him to go inside of it, just to stand there for a minute while he gets some photos. He just wants to take a few pictures.

“Bean,” Yoongi whispers, biting into his lip. “Bean I'm really—I don't wanna go in there,” he turns to look at him from under his beanie and through his dark bangs. His hair is getting long.

“It's just for a few minutes,” Hongbin promises, and his voice is soft. “Sides, you've got your magical bracelets on, nothin's gonna happen t'you.” Yoongi stays right where he is till Hongbin moves in close to kiss him, wraps one arm around his shoulders and hugs him in close. “N'when we get home I'll spoil you something wicked, okay? Promise.” Hongbin kisses Yoongi's ear, sucks at his neck and Yoongi swallows, nods and sighs when he moves away.

He gathers his strength and courage, standing in that place in the woods, and walks towards the birch tree circle. He hesitates outside of it, pushes one shoulder of his shirt off as a way to extend his time, swallowing hard. It feels—it feels wrong, he doesn't want to be here. His cross feels heavy, his bracelets feel like manacles. “Bean,” he whispers.

“Go on, babe,” Hongbin encourages, and Yoongi, god help him—Yoongi steps toward the ring of birch trees. He walks towards them and pushes his way through. They seem to close in on themselves, trying to keep him out, but he stumbles in anyway, like an idiot child making their way through a baby gate into a place they're not supposed to be. The yellow crown of leaves quivers like he's brought a breeze with him, and the sun beams down onto him through the clearing. The saplings and dead leaves are bright-lit around him and he takes another careful step. Another. Until he's in the middle of the ring and he turns to look at Hongbin, who is smiling with his camera against his face.

“Take your hat off,” he calls, and Yoongi pulls it off his head, shakes out his hair. He feels like something is watching him. His skin is crawling. Little beetle-legs itching over his bare chest and exposed hands and the back of his neck. “You look so good, Yoongi.”

“Just hurry up,” Yoongi whispers, feeling cold sweat beading at his hairline, dripping down his back. Fuck. Fuck, his heart is racing. He can feel eyes on him. He can see the shadows getting darker in the corners of his vision. “Bean,” he croaks.

“Just a few more,” Hongbin promises, moving around the ring until he's out of Yoongi's sight because Yoongi doesn't dare turn. “We're almost done.”

“ _Bean._ ” Yoongi can't move. It's... Something is warping. Everything is tilted. He hears Hongbin's voice like it's coming down a tunnel.

“Okay babe, lets get outta here. C'mon, I'll drive home.”

Yoongi walks from the center of the circle, his hat forgotten. He tries not to run. If you run, you catch the attention of the wild things around you. Coyotes, bear, moose. Cougars, wolves. Demons. The Devil himself. He pushes his way through the birch trees and when he reaches the forest, it's plain oak and pine and hemlock and maple mundane and shadow-lit and smelling like forest instead of like magic, he almost cries in relief. “Okay Bean,” he says. “Lets go home, okay?”

But Hongbin isn't there.

“...Bean?” Yoongi asks, feeling fear mounting up in his chest. “Bean? Hongbin? Wh—Hongbin, where are you, it's not—” he can't see the truck, either. The faded old red of Hongbin's 1996 pickup is nowhere to be seen. But he's just. There's no way Hongbin could have started the truck without Yoongi hearing, there's no way he could have gotten away in the few seconds it took for Yoongi to cross through the thick line of birch.

A twig snaps behind Yoongi and he does not look.

He knows the rules. He knows. Don't look. Don't look. He feels like he's standing at the cracked boulder. He feels like he's twelve and it's dark and the boulder seems to reach the sky, it's jagged split shimmering granite and micah and old magic. His hand wraps around the hilt of his skinning knife.

“C'mon, Babs,” he says, naming the knife immediately, naming it after his pet rabbit, a gigantic doe he'd loved until she died years before, big and black and beautiful. “Lets go.” It feels safer to talk to himself. He knows not to look. Not to run. He doesn't want to attract it's attention. The leaves crunch behind him and he doesn't look. He just keeps walking. He doesn't look at anything for too long, doesn't stare at the ground. He can feel himself crying in terror, can feel his cross weighing heavy on his neck and he can hear the heavy snuffling of a bear or a coyote, can hear the distant braying of a bull moose.

“It's okay Babs,” he whispers, still walking, staring, moving through the trees like they are a maze. They're closing in, moving closer together to restrict his path. He feels like he's being led. “It's okay Babs, we're okay, we're okay, s'okay, we're gonna go find Beanie and we're gonna kick his ass and.”

There is a bellow. The sound of a direbear, the sound of a Devil, and Yoongi halts, frozen, one hand gripping tightly at his cross. He wants his mother. Even for all her god-fearing, gay-hating bullshit he wants her, he's so scared, his heart won't stop hammering and he hears himself sob. His lips purse and his legs buckle and he closes his eyes pulls his knife from it's sheathe and holds his cross and prays because it's all he can do.

“Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name,” the words come as easily as they always have, because he's been saying them since he was a tiny child, since he was old enough to press his hands together and sit in reverence. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” The bellow is closer now. It's nearly on top of him. “Give,” he gasps, hiccups and sobs. He's shaking. The world is closing in on him. He can smell rank fur, can taste the shit and sweat stink of it, the thing that's been following him and maybe it's not a bear but a boar, or a wendigo, or the Devil himself. Yoongi can smell decay, can feel the ground rotting under his buckled legs and he gives a wretched, wrenching cry for his mother, clutching his cross more tightly. It's lipping at his neck now, his shoulder. It's teeth are wet and it's drool is dripping, green and red and putrified down his bare chest. He retches, filmy bile on his lips. His words come so fast, so fast.

“Give us this day our daily bread and forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors and lead me not into temptation but deliver me from evil oh God please—”

“Yoongi?”

Yoongi stares at the ground, holding his cross and his knife. Boots crunch on the moss and dead twigs and Hongbin kneels in front of him. “Yoongi? Babe, are you okay?” Yoongi looks up at Hongbin, who is watching him fearfully, reaching out to hold his arms. His hands are warm and firm. The ring of birch trees looms behind him like a wall of bones.

“Babe, c'mon, lets go,” Hongbin is looking around suspiciously, glaring out into the silent woods and Yoongi fucking sobs like a child and throws himself into his arms. He can still feel it, hot, slick teeth and a wet nose, sloppy fur and the stink of rotten flesh in a decaying mouth. Hongbin guides him to the truck, helps him in and when Hongbin climbs into the drivers seat Yoongi lays down, presses his face into Hongbin's belly and doesn't move for the entire drive back into town, crying and terrified and trembling. He's in the way of the gearshift but he doesn't care, and Hongbin doesn't make him move. Just holds his shoulder instead of the lever, and hums nonsense along with the radio.

 


	2. the devils headstone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's on the ninth dark of nightmares that Yoongi gives up. When God or the Devil or Death calls you, you have to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter contains non-consensual sex with a demon of some kind.

When Yoongi was a small child, he'd gone to church every Sunday. The little catholic church in their town had a fairly large congregation and Yoongi's favorite part of church was singing. He loved hymns. He loved to sing them, even though he wasn't really very good at it, because it made him feel close to God. God would love him even if he couldn't sing, right? And when he died he'd go to heaven, where all good people went, and God would give him perfect pitch so he could sing with the angels.

His mother loved to sing with him. On the way home from church he'd sit in her lap in his father's truck and sing _Ave Maria_ or _Te Lucis Ante Terminum,_ in Latin, of course. He'd sing childrens hymns, too, but he liked those two best. They made him feel reverent and loved, before he'd figured out that his mother's version of God would have wanted to smite him for preferring a cock to a pussy, for letting his eyes linger on the boys out in the athletic fields instead of the girls on the bleachers.

Regardless, he liked to sing. The Latin felt good on his tongue and it was those two songs he sang now, under his breath as he fiddled with his cross and watched the sky through the window of the apartment he and Hongbin lived in. They shared a room, and a bed, but Hongbin was asleep by now. His arm was braced over Yoongi's belly—he'd barely let go of him since they'd gotten back from the tree a few days ago, had showered with him, had held his hand through reheating dinners, had kissed him sweetly as they went to sleep and now, like the past three nights, Hongbin had his arm over Yoongis stomach as though holding on to him, keeping him in place. He didn't understand what had happened, and there was no way Yoongi could have explained, but he knew something bad had happened, something wrong, and he'd promised into Yoongi's dark hair that they'd never go back, that he was sorry, that he hadn't meant to get him hurt. Yoongi knew that hadn't been his intention. Hongbin just hadn't believed him, when he said the place was _off._ But he knew now. The sight of Yoongi with stringy vomit on his jeans, shaking and crying, paralyzed with fear, had made sure he wouldn't forget.

Hongbin promised they wouldn't go back to that place in the woods, but Yoongi still feels the wet saliva on his neck and chest, inhales the stink and feels like he's going to be sick because whatever had been out there, whatever had tried to attack him for the instant he stepped into the trees, it's chasing him even now. He can feel it. He's afraid to close his eyes. If he sleeps it will chase him in his dreams. If he sleeps, it will find him.

Yoongi holds his cross in his hand and licks his lips and tries not to close his eyes.

~

The next week passes in tense agony. Yoongi goes to work at the gas station, comes home, lays with his eyes open until he passes out, suffers from nightmares that wake him screaming. Hongbin can't help, even though he tries. Yoongi knows it's getting closer, whatever followed him out of the woods. He can hear it calling, sometimes in whispers, sometimes in hideous roars.

It's on the ninth dark of nightmares that Yoongi gives up. When God or the Devil or Death calls you, you have to go. He thinks of Babs, her stark black body hopping softly off into the grass and simply not coming back. She'd quietly found a sheltered place, laid down, and died. Yoongi had been inconsolable, crying for hours while he held her cool body and stroked her fur, her long ears. He'd had Babs since he was ten; he used to be able to take her out on walks with him. She'd been there that day at the Devils Headstone. She'd saved his life and when she died, Yoongi couldn't help but feel like... Well. The unease in his thighs and lower back, the unconscious tension of always ready to run, that feeling hardly ever went away. But he knows something is calling him, and he knows he has to go, just like Babs did.

He slides out of bed and hesitates. Bends to kiss Hongbin on the forehead. They'd had sex that afternoon—Hongbin above him, cradling him, holding him close and tight and safe and Yoongi—god. Yoongi adores him. But if he doesn't go to the beast the beast will come to him, and Hongbin will just... Be in the way. A casualty.

He goes to the dresser. Puts on his favorite clothes, and exchanges his small, simple cross for the one his mother had given him on his seventeenth birthday—still very simple silver, but heavier, sturdier, on a thick leather strap he ties around his neck. He pulls on a hat, his jacket and boots. He grabs his bag and slings it over his shoulder. He tucks his skinning knife onto his belt and for a moment hates himself for naming it after his dead doe. His father had insisted they skin Babs, because her coat was glossy and thick, and his father had made him be the one to do it, had sat and watched while Yoongi wept and cut apart his baby, his best friend.

Her pelt is on top of the dresser, laying soft and clean covered in pretty crystals and other eccentric things he's collected since moving out of his parents house and dabbling in the mysticism he's always been so fascinated by and afraid to touch. He reads tarot occasionally, uses the crystals for meditation. Hongbin thinks it's cute, all his _new age-y bullshit,_ and likes to take pictures of Yoongi surrounded by incense sticks and candles, cradling the one large crystal ball he has, the size of a softball, in his hands. Hongbin won a contest last year with a picture like that—Yoongi in the dark and the smoke, his eyes smudged with dollar store makeup and a ring of firewheels, buttercups and a single, large daylily crowning his head. He'd looked like a priestess, an ancient shaman. Hongbin had won five hundred dollars and spent most of it on new equipment, save for the money he spent on a _huge_ dinner at the nice Italian place outside of town for the two of them, and the hand-beaten silver anklet that Yoongi, as a second thought, pulls onto his ankle. For luck, he thinks. Or maybe love.

He tugs on socks, then his sneakers, and makes his way out into the road of the dead-end town he's lived in all his life. Past the sleepy houses and squat apartment buildings he is surrounded on all sides by tall, menacing trees and mountains like the shoulders of titans in sleep. The streetlights are a fair distance apart and at this hour all the lights in the houses are out.

Out here, in the dark, it's closer.

Yoongi pulls the mag-light out of his bag and turns it on as he steps off the road and onto the beaten path that leads to the Devils Headstone, that huge cracked boulder at the top of the bare hill out past the high school where nothing ever grows and the clay ground is hard like a skull. He hears the night-sounds of birds, small mammals and lizards. He walks to his gallows and he feels the thing following him so close now, so close. It's been behind him for days but it's walking in step with him and he can feel it's presence like stones on his chest. He can see the moon, bright white at the top of the hill as he climbs and when he reaches it—that cracked and terrible stone, glimmering granite piercing up out of the skull of the hill, he sees the shadows winding around it like a great black snake. He doesn't turn.

“There you are,” says a voice like warm rum. It burns his skin, the inside of his ears. It sounds infernal. Yoongi swallows and flinches when hands touch his shoulders. “I didn't think you were coming, pet. You took a long time.”

“Don't touch me,” he says, weakly. The thing that's been chasing him laughs, a barking and terrible sound.

“Boy,” it says, and it's breath is noxious over his cheek and ear. “You don't get to tell me what to do. You stepped into _my house,_ and you are trying to give me orders?” It's slimy fingers drip down Yoongi's body. Somehow it is touching him through his clothes and it's hot, clammy hands are spreading wetness like the film over an hours-dead fish. Yoongi reaches for his cross and the thing laughs. “Foolish boy,” it says. “To think that God will save you. Have you not sinned, do you not dwell with a man, have you not _lain_ with the beast of his body, have you not felt him inside of you,” Yoongi feels heat on his back, so much like Hongbin just that morning, kissing his neck, holding his waist, _how are you baby, did you sleep at all?_

“Like the Devil himself.”

“Let go of me,” Yoongi whispers. The creature, the monster, it laughs. It laughs and winds closer and it's voice feels like a bone comb being very gently dragged over his skin.

“You stepped into my house,” it says, and Yoongi swallows. “You got away the first time, boy, but you won't escape a second time. There's no spirit to save you now, no beast. It's just you, trespassing into places little children should never go.” It's true. He had. He'd gone in through that ring of birch trees. “You stepped into my house and my hound caught your scent and you're mine now, boy, all of you, even the _memory_ of you.”

“No,” Yoongi says, shaking his head even as the thing starts to slide around him, enveloping him like hot water, under his clothes and against his skin, cradling him up. It feels like he's in that horror movie, The Blob, but instead of eating him the thing is just holding him, moving him, sliding between his toes and under his arms and against his groin. “No, stop,” his voice is so weak and he's so scared. He wants Hongbin. He wants his mother.

“Never,” the creature grins against his neck and Yoongi feels his entire body weightless, suspended, being pulled apart. His arms are yanked out to his sides, his legs are spread open wide and the gelatinous slime is encircling his entire body, sliding up his neck and sliding into his mouth. “Little whores are my property, boy. Little sinners,” Yoongi feels the puttyish thing in his mouth taking shape and he shakes his head, struggles uselessly. He looks up at the bright white moon and cries, feeling the shape of Hongbin's cock in his mouth and knows it's not Hongbin, knows that if he'd just pretended to be straight—if he'd just done as he was expected to, if he'd never let David LeGrasse kiss him out at the Devils Headstone when he was twelve... If he'd never let Hongbin kiss him he wouldn't be here, trapped at the terrible place where a stone as big as a house is split in two, the place where the taint on his soul, the patina of tarnish had started to spread when he was still a child. He wouldn't be wrapped in unholy warmth with his clothes dissolved and his skin wet.

The moon shines so bright it hurts his eyes so he closes them. He closes them and whimpers, shakes his head and feels the monster through the slime and slick, smells it's rank breath as it's weight pushes him down against the crack in the stone.

It holds his legs open. It's hairy body is so large and heavy, it's big, wet teeth on his neck so terrifying and all he can do is lay there and quiver and weep, struggling for breath around the thrusting into his throat, well past his gag reflex. Something is holding his cheeks apart. The gelatinous monster perhaps, or another, distant set of hands. Yoongi stares up at the sky and doesn't dare to look at what is climbing on top of him, pressing _inside._ He knows it's a demon, he knows it will kill him when it's done and he's almost grateful. It doesn't hurt when it slides in, a thickness too huge to be human. It's the size of an horse, of an elephant, of a.... A monster, with big claws on his belly and bicep and a big jaw that closes easily around his throat. He wishes it hurt. He is being cushioned against the stone, the slimy gel wrapping around him like tentacles in the hentai Hongbin likes to watch with him. Just thinking of Hongbin makes him sob and the thing laughs, pushes deeper inside of him like there's anywhere else for it to go but Yoongi feels hollowed out, feels ruined, feels like there's nothing inside of him but the monster fucking into him like an animal, the thrusts wet and heavy and disgusting. It feels like it's not happening. He feels the contact distantly, only knows it's happening because he can sense it tickling over his skin, pushing into him over and over.

Something sucks at his nipple. Yoongi weeps, choking, and the beast laughs, it's voice like a bellowing bear. “We've an audience, little whore,” it says, and Yoongi squeezes his eyes shut, tries to shake his head. He's going to die. He's going to die being fucked by a demon at the Devils Headstone because he was stupid enough to let Hongbin talk him into going into that ring of birch trees at the place in the woods—

But then.

All is cold. Yoongi is dropped to hard stone and he rolls down, slamming into the angle at the bottom of the crack in the rock and he scrambles to curl up, to hide himself. He's dressed. He's dressed and weeping wretchedly and loudly, his throat hurts but he screams for help anyway, though the sound doesn't make it far. His voice is nearly gone.

“Hey,” says a voice he does not know, a voice that is all green fields and soft summer wind. There are hands on him and he shrieks, struggles, is trapped against the rock. “Hey, it's okay, it's okay. Hold on, I'm right here, it's okay. You're okay.”

Yoongi doesn't feel okay.

He feels something nudging his head. Like a great cat, perhaps, or the memory of Babs trying to groom his eyebrows and hairline when he was a boy. It makes him laugh and cry at the same time. God, he misses her. He loves her so much, his big black baby, her sweet doe.

But then he doesn't feel anything: nothing except for heavy warmth and darkness settling around him like a shroud and he welcomes it. Maybe it's death. He should be so lucky.

 


	3. babs.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Babs had known the second the little boy picked her up from her wooden trap that he was special.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a short little... interlude, i guess. some background.

Babs had known the second the little boy picked her up from her wooden trap that he was special. She'd felt it as all animals feel things, in his skin and eyes, in the gentleness of his hands as he cradled her and kissed her head. He'd been such a soft, sweet boy, held her so carefully against his flat, childish chest and wrapped her in his coat. She'd been born in the fall and it was winter then, and he protected her sensitive ears from the cold and so she had decided even then, as a kitten, that she was going to take care of him.

She hadn't known how huge a job it would be.

But he loved her. He loved her so much and she couldn't leave him. Even after the incident at the Bad Place, where her sweet boy had been attacked, screamed and fled, she couldn't leave him. She didn't want to. He was her boy, and she loved him, and she would take care of him.

But she wasn't meant to live so long. It was unnatural, she knew. He was keeping her alive with the fierce force of his love, the little pink threads refusing to let her go. She wasn't meant to _be_ alive, she was... Meant to be something else, but she couldn't place it. Not even the great white rabbit could tell her in dreams why she was so old, why her boy was so desperate to keep her.

She found out when she wandered into the field. The great white rabbit had spoken to her in tongues and Babs grew. She grew to be shaped more like a hare, with pointed nose and powerful back legs and she grew huge size like a beast of the mountains. Her body was left behind and she went into the sky to be painted with stars and cosmos and always she kept an eye on her boy. She watched him hiccup and cry when he skinned her body, with his father standing behind him threatening to throw her corpse out for the foxes if he didn't do as he was told. He'd been so afraid of his father. The man feared God and women and the forces of nature but her boy obeyed him. She knew he was afraid.

She went to him in dreams that night, her huge body like a cougar beside him while he cried miserably that he was sorry, that he loved her, his hands fisted in her black pelt and he wept and wept and wept.

She could not go to him often. Something was wrapped around him like a shroud, something was holding him inside himself like a net. It had followed him from the Bad Place when he was a child, as soon as his lips had touched the lips of the boy who had gone with him. It stuck to him like a burr, but he'd never noticed it as she did. She watched it leech life from him, watched as it turned him from a thin but rambunctious child into a skinny, sickly and tired teenager, then to an exhausted, world-weary young adult.

Still he fought. She loved him so. She went to him when she could force her way through the darkness and out there, in the ring of birch trees, she had begged him not to go. Not to step through to that place that was another place also, she knew the golden crown of leaves was a noose of thorns. But he'd gone. He'd gone and the thing she'd been hiding him from found him. She heard him whisper, heard him pray, heard him name the knife he'd skinned her with. He gave it her name.

She loved him so. She wanted him to be safe. To be happy, and beloved, to be always where she could be with him, nosing at his hands for his attention, raking her ears against those textured bands of iron around his wrists, the ones he could no longer squeeze his hands through.

She went with him then, as he walked to his death at the Bad Place. She watched the Devilsnake coil around the stone and her ears rose and twitched, her paws clawed at the ground in preparation but the fight never came. Perhaps it was her desperation and panic. Perhaps it was his screaming as the thing violated him, hurt him, wrapped itself around him and choked him.

A great bobcat appeared first, pale eyes unblinking and Babs had sat up on her haunches, bared her teeth. But it did not come for her. Instead it cried and a man came. A man wrapped in white magic like smoke, a man who waved his hand and banished away the dark with an easy movement. Babs leapt to the side of her boy, nosed at his face, licked his hair like he was her kitten and in many ways, he was. She heard human words but they meant nothing to her, as they always had. They were not _Babs,_ or _I love you,_ or _I'm sorry._

She licked his sweaty hair and when the man pulled her boy from the great stone she hissed, squeaked in protest until he noticed her. He blinked, looked down at her boy, then back up at her, confused. “Is he yours,” he asked, in the language of her people, and she rasped out a _yes,_ unpracticed in speech. _Mine. My boy. Mine._

The man put him down and Babs hopped to him, nuzzled at his head, watched his neck roll back and forth. She cried out, afraid he was dead. He looked dead. He _felt_ dead to her panicked mind, but the soft flutter of his weak heartbeat reassured her.

“He's all right,” the man promised, his great bobcat sitting behind him, regal and self-important. “It's just—you need to get him home, all right? Can you do that?”

Babs kneaded her front paws into the ground, her tail rising and her ears perked up. The man lifted her boy and laid him on her back. He tucked back her boys hair and a feeling of angry possessiveness rolled off of her with so much force the man backed away with a light laugh, hands raised.

“Aah, I'm sorry. I'll come in a while. In the day. He'll need you soon, more than he does now. He's too old for... Well. It's a bit wrong, given his age. But I suppose there's not much to be done, yeah? He has to be taken care of.”

Babs stamped her back leg and started to walk away very slowly indeed. It was an unnatural gait for a rabbit, the soft and awkward lollop, but she didn't dare disturb her sleeping boy, her poor boy. He was dreaming, and she hadn't been able to do anything about his nightmares in days but perhaps, sleeping against her dark pelt, he would find an easier sleep, a deeper sleep.

Babs carried her boy all the way home. She carried him home and into his bed. With the magic tickling around him, around her, she undressed him and tucked him into the covers, leaving on that beaten silver anklet. Her boys boy—the one with dark hair and white teeth and the extra eye—groaned and reached out to wrap an arm around her boys waist. Her boy turned over onto his belly to cling at him and Babs, satisfied, settled herself at the end of the bed at the size she was more accustomed to, laid out on her side on the rug in relaxation but ready, at any moment, to leap up and attack any nasty little creature that tried to climb in through the windows or under the door, as she had since she'd died.

Just because she'd left him physically, did not mean she was not there. Dead or not she would protect him. He was her boy. She loved him, and he loved her still; the ferocity of it was what had allowed her to stay, the great white rabbit told her so. The fierce, fearless love, and the little strands of pale pink magic that threaded beneath that black, suffocating net.

 


	4. the longhouse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Hongbin first got his license, he'd driven out this way. He'd driven out into the woods to get away from his parents, their screaming, the sound of broken glass and boot to skin. He'd driven out as far as he dared and he'd come to the longhouse and something in him told him he shouldn't get closer.

Hongbin knew a camera could see things his eyes couldn't. He'd shuddered when he developed the photos of Yoongi in the ring of birch trees, the thick shadow behind him building like clouds. What made it worse was that for an instant Yoongi'd disappeared. He'd been making his way out of the ring and to Hongbin's eyes he'd vanished into thin air and Hongbin panicked, ran around the ring twice before Yoongi had appeared, lips shiny with saliva and sick, trembling, crying.

He'd been afraid to develop the photos. He still hadn't shown them to Yoongi.

But he was insatiably curious and adventurous and he had to photograph things, he had to. Leaving the apartment without his camera gave him a headache, to be separated from his art for too long made him distressed, so he'd come out to the longhouse by himself. Yoongi was not feeling well—he hadn't felt really well for days, pale and nauseous and exhausted, but Hongbin needed to get out and so he'd taken his camera and a few rolls of film and he'd gone out into the woods, past the ring of birch trees, snapping pictures as he went. He wasn't sure that Yoongi had ever been so far out into the trees, into the silence of the great woods.

When Hongbin first got his license, he'd driven out this way. He'd driven out into the woods to get away from his parents, their screaming, the sound of broken glass and boot to skin. He'd driven out as far as he dared and he'd come to the longhouse and something in him told him he shouldn't get closer. It reminded him of the places in Virginia close to where he'd grown up and been born, places where the mountains dipped into valleys and became swamps the color of rust and the sound of birds, the intolerable grind of insects buzzing loud as a chainsaw. Swaths of kudzu grew up over the pine trees, strangled them and blanketed the canopy with their terrible leaves until the trees withered and the ground was bare, devoid of any little plants to soak up nutrients and sunlight. Something had always told him not to go to those places and he'd gone anyway, even before he'd been given an old polaroid camera and a stack of film by his best friends mother for his seventh birthday. But after... Well.

Something in him told him not to go closer to the longhouse, now. He ignored it, as he'd been ignoring it since he was seven. He stopped the truck and stared, looked at the weathered grey wood and sagging roof, the moss that grew over the doorframe and the stones that lined the area. It looked ancient, like it had been built by the Abenaki. The opening in the front—the door, which had likely once been hung with a bearskin—seemed a gaping maw to Hongbin, and he held his camera up to his eye to take a single picture of it. He was unreasonably, unspeakably afraid of it, and he wondered if that was what Yoongi had felt at that ring of birch trees—sheer and unaccountable terror for no reason at all. There was no way a building so old should still be standing. There was no way the wood should have held through thousands of New England winters, hard snows and muddy spring thaws and sweltering, tree-rot summers.

He took a step closer. The air was cooler, though he accredited that to the shadows and the trees. They grew tipping inward, folding over the longhouse and hiding it from the sky. His mouth filled with saliva and he swallowed, took another step and held his camera up to his eye. He snapped photographs of the trees and the grey wood, the sun barely piercing the thick pine boughs.

He felt his breath shudder out and the air puffed a small cloud of steam. It was September. It was near the end of September in the middle of the day but his breath was showing and it was so, so cold. He took another step and felt his belly starting to ache with hunger, though he'd eaten a large breakfast and lunch.

He could just barely see into the doorway, could see a circle of stones in the crackled sunlight and he brought his camera up to photograph it. He snapped two shots and then—

Then he saw it. The great thing, the man-bear with bloody lips and human hands with bear claws, a rack of antlers like a huge bull moose and Hongbin froze. He'd lived the first ten years of his life in Virgina, close to the base of the Appalachians; he knew the legends of what lived in the mountains. What lurked in the dark and he knew what he was seeing, though he didn't know the word for it.

Camera against his face, he slowly stepped back. It lumbered toward the door, and he moved back another step. Another. It looked like a starving man wrapped in the too-large skin of a kodiak bear, it's antlers were sharp and covered in the bloody remains of the soft, mossy covering that always ripped apart when bucks fought in the spring over the right to mate with a doe. It opened it's mouth and through the viewfinder Hongbin watched it, watched it's needle teeth and saw its huge red tongue loll out, hanging nearly to it's chest. Another step back.

 _You can't run,_ Yoongi used to say, when they were younger teenagers and he was telling him all about the stories of the Native Americans, the Abenaki who had once lived where they lived now. _You can't run from forest things. You call their attention when you panic, just like sharks or alligators or somethin. You gotta walk and if you can y'ain't supposed to turn around but if you're lookin' at'em you can't break eye contact. Makes you seem weak, right?_

Hongbin kept his camera trained on the creature as it tilted it's head to get it's antlers through, squeezed it's great body through the doorframe. It was so huge. Nine feet, ten feet tall, four feet across the shoulders. It's clawed fingertips dragged on the ground and Hongbin's back hit the passenger door of his truck. He worked his way around, still watching it as it watched him, it's tongue twitching, it's glassy black eyes taking in his every move. He managed to climb into the truck but he couldn't start it, not without looking away.

But he wasn't watching it, was he. His camera was.

Swallowing hard, and hoping, praying he wasn't making a mistake, Hongbin kept his camera trained on the beast and looked at his steering wheel, fought his left hand around the wheel-mount to turn the key. The engine roared into life, the monster roared behind him. Hongbin dropped his camera and threw the truck into gear. He felt something hit the back of the tailgate and he slammed the gas and clutch, heedless of the screeching in the gearbox as he tore up the ground with his big tires, the truck careening down the mountain, past the ring of birch trees, past the high school, where the Devils Headstone loomed evilly.

He pulled into the parking lot of their shitty apartment building and shivered and shivered, glancing at the rearview, but seeing nothing. He looked down at his camera, reaching to hold it. He'd snapped a few pictures, he was sure, as he'd panicked and driven away. He was afraid to develop them. But he had to. He had to _know._

That was always his problem. He just had to know things, he had to learn them. So as he waited for the film to develop in the bathroom (he and Yoongi had managed to light-proof it so it could be used as a dark room when necessary, even though it made Yoongi complain sometimes) he pulled out Yoongi's laptop and looked up _Abenaki monsters._

He dredged through pages of mythology and history before he found something that caught his eye. _Giwakwa,_ a man-animal, a cannibal. A former human, whose heart turned to ice after performing cannibalism, or letting someone under their care starve to death. Hongbin couldn't help but think of how _cold_ the air had gotten, about how his stomach had ached with hunger when he stood too close to the grey and rotted longhouse. The notes on the article compared it to a Wendigo, something Hongbin knew only through a show he and Yoongi liked to watch when it's reruns were on weekday morning TV. He shuddered violently, erased the browser history, and closed the laptop.

When Yoongi got home from the gas station, his eyes dark and his body looking more sickly than ever, Hongbin had tucked him in close and kissed him and curled their bodies together. He said nothing of the photos he'd taken, nothing about the trip, but when Yoongi asked about the mark on the back bumper of the truck— _like someone threw a cement block at it or something, jesus—_ he had nothing to say. Nothing at all. He just laid him down and lazily rubbed their bodies against one another, one hand on the back of Yoongi's bent leg and cupping the curve of his small, soft ass, the other cradling his head while they kissed one another until Yoongi was breathless, pink-cheeked and red-lipped and looking more human, more alive, than he had in weeks.

Hongbin wanted to say it, but couldn't. What did those words mean to people like them, people who had no context for them aside from what they'd been told all their lives, what they knew to be wrong? No. No, it was foolish, so instead he kissed Yoongi's white neck and pulled his body on top of his own and held him till he fell asleep, light on his chest, head dropped into the space under Hongbin's chin.

Hongbin stayed awake a long time, thinking of needle teeth and icy hands. Thinking of Giwakwa, and all the monsters he'd ever been told lurked in woods so dense the sun barely touched the ground. Maybe he'd imagined it all. Maybe his overactive imagination had made it all up.

But maybe he hadn't. Yoongi _had_ disappeared, for a moment. He'd reappeared like magic. He'd been sick and crying and he hadn't let go of Hongbin, hadn't let him out of arms reach for nearly two days. But maybe it was all just a dream.

It was just a dream.

(the photographs, though. those did not lie to him and hongbin burned them on the little fire escape, closed his eyes as the evidence of what happened in the woods charred and crumpled and disappeared. if he pretended hard enough, it wouldn't be real.

and if he pretended hard enough, he could believe that the hunger in the pit of his stomach, the cold in his fingertips, was just his overactive imagination, too.)

 


	5. the witches house

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In their small house in the hemlock forest where the trees grow dense and high, two people make joyous, excited love.

In their small house in the hemlock forest where the trees grow dense and high, two people make joyous, excited love.

They are tearing at one another's clothes, they are pulling one another's hair. In the dark they are fumbling, laughing, kissing and tugging one another to a low, wide bed with rope supports beneath the down mattress and one of them is climbing on top of the other, murmuring words and laughing when the other whines out like a small child, pouting and hitting his shoulder with one gentle fist. In the air around them hang pendants of silver and crystal, shining and shimmering with every touch. Candles flicker into light, flames dancing with the sound of their kisses. Muscles are shuddering, breath is gasped in, and when they slide together they almost become one person, a gently rolling wave on the bed, lips touching but not kissing, laughter and passion mingling as they speak and sing and _love._

When Seokjin is done, he crouches over Taehyung's narrow body and kisses his shoulders and neck, chuckles into his throat. “You're insatiable,” he accuses, and Taehyung laughs, tipping his head back, offering more of his body up to Seokjin's impassioned exploration. Seokjin's hands grip his waist unforgivably tight, and he's still inside of him, still hard.

“Devil's influence,” Taehyung pants and they both laugh, knowing such things to be untrue but Taehyung will never tire of his horror movie references, one of his few indulgences in the world outside of their home. “Surely that's what makes me the way I am,” he says, dramatically.

“Definitely not the fact that you've been a cockslut since you were a baby teenager,” Seokjin laughs out and Taehyung hits his shoulder but he's grinning still. “I'm not wrong.”

“I never said you were,” Taehyung sighs, leans back into the pillows and wiggles his hips to settle them comfortably against Seokjin with a little wet noise and a happy giggle. “We should go into town soon.”

“Don't want to,” Seokjin complains. “Don't like it. People stare.”

“Because we're witches?”

“Because we're gay Asians,” Seokjin sighs, heavily put upon. “If any of them can see that we're witches past that, they're pretty incredible. Or I mean, if _I'm_ a witch. We both know you're not coming.”

“I guess you're right about that,” Taehyung replies with a pouting sigh, running his fingers through Seokjin's dark hair. “But we need some stuff. Food and stuff. I can't keep the pantry stores up forever and you know I can't make food out of thin air.”

“Your pasta addiction is a problem.”

“You don't get to complain when we don't have to buy produce or meat. You love the greenhouse I built for you.”

Seokjin gives this the consideration it deserves and sighs, getting up onto his knees to stretch his arms over his head. “I suppose that's true,” he admits, and squeaks when Taehyung reaches to pinch his nipple. “Stop it,” he says.

“Why,” Taehyung asks, grinning. “They're right there and I want to play with them.”

“You're a little shit,” Seokjin says.

“You love me,” Taehyung replies and like always there is a shadow of doubt in his voice. Seokjin leans down again, on his elbows. He slides his hands under Taehyung's shoulders and cups his neck, the back of his head with strong, bent fingers.

“I do,” he promises, rocking his hips, feeling Taehyung shiver and shudder and sigh beneath him. “I love you more than I love anything else on this forsaken planet,” he assures, the rocking of his hips slowly turning to thrusts. “I love you so much it hurts, so much that I just want to make a birdcage inside of myself and let you live there and sing for me as long as you live, Taehyung.”

“I want that,” Taehyung whispers between little groans of pleasure, trying to open his thighs wider around Seokjin's narrow hips. “Oh I want that, I... Oh _fuck,_ Seokjin.” The waves of magic move over him like warm water and he cums, flooded with pink light, such intense love that it drowns him. He shakes, belly twitching. Three times in an hour and a half is exhausting and he whines weakly when Seokjin moves to turn him over onto his belly and straddles his thighs, pushing back inside him with a wet, squelching noise. He moan-laughs in self disgust, clutches the blankets and collapses completely when Seokjin kisses his shoulders, the back of his neck. He feels him thrust shallowly and tries to lift his hips, to let him deeper. _I love you,_ Seokjin whispers into his dark hair, against the curve of his throat. _Goddess, Taehyung, I love you._

For a moment they lay there like that, and then Seokjin eases up, pulls away. He turns Taehyung onto his back and then his side, cradles him up and kisses him, soft and chaste and sweet. All around them, the little pendants are hovering in the air, shining, glimmering with the magic that had just burst out of the couple on the bed and into the stone and silver. Seokjin waves a hand and they arrange themselves on hooks on the wall.

“I'm tired,” Taehyung whispers, and Seokjin hums, kisses his forehead.

“I know, baby,” Seokjin assures, pulling the blankets up. “I know. Get some rest.”

Taehyung sleeps. Seokjin gets up an hour or so later to photograph their new work, lists the pendants on Etsy and isn't surprised when three of the twelve are almost immediately sold.

Their magic works, Seokjin knows. It works. Every time.

~

Going into town is about Seokjin's least favorite thing in the world, but he has to be the one to go. Taehyung can't control himself for too long, can't be around things he can fiddle with, because he just can't keep himself from play. Seokjin loves that about him; his playful nature, how the world is his sandbox but the humans don't like it. Seokjin can wear a bracelet to (mostly) pass as mundane—how beautiful he is still catches attention, though he likes to blame that on his absent father, likely some kind of demon or incubus—but no piece of jewelry, no charm or spell is enough to make wild Taehyung seem like a human.

So he goes into town by himself.

To do so, he has to pass through a Gate, and the antique truck does so with a shudder against the magic around it. He comes out onto a dirt road and heads down and around the mountain. They live safe on the south side. The north side, he knows, is home to some dirty beasts, worse than the occasional ogre or brainless hoards of vicious pixies that tend to circle around their property in addition to the usual, harmless things that root about in the treeroots and make little nests in the branches. There's bad things in the woods where the ash trees grow in spirals, where the birch trees make a circle full of cloudless sky. Where the rock on the bald hilltop watches over the town below, an evil gargoyle just waiting to burst from the stone. Seokjin hates that place. He's hated it since he first set eyes on it when he was eighteen and moved up here from Boston with Taehyung, only fifteen, in tow.

It's unpleasant to drive in it's shadow but he has to, and to get into town Seokjin also has to pass a run-down trailer park. It's a dank, miserable place. Even the auras of children are weak and pea-green, but today it seems especially... Bad. So bad that he stops the truck to enable his third eye, to stare as though he'll be able to discern what the hell is wrong with the place if he looks long enough. He hasn't been down this way in a couple of years now but even the last time he was here things weren't so dismal. There's something on the border f his mind, something dark and ancient, something truly wicked. He lets his eye wander and he finds a pale yellow trailer. He finds the sight of a man smoking on the front steps. He can't be older than twenty-one but he carries himself like an old man, stooped and weary. His hair is shaggy and unkempt, his skin is sallow and at his feet is a black rabbit, flopped miserably to the ground. It's unnatural, all of it, but the _wicked_ thing comes out when the front door opens and a man stands there, if Seokjin could call it a man. It looks more like a monster, with sharp teeth and dark eyes and thin, thin limbs. It sits behind the man on the steps, wraps arms around him and kisses his throat. Bites into his neck so hard that the man cries out weakly, but doesn't try to get away. As though he's used to getting bitten hard enough to bleed. The man leans back into the embrace once the initial press of teeth is over and tips his head, bringing his cigarette to his lips.

Seokjin's invasive gaze must be noticeable. The man with the teeth can see him, and he snarls, the sound, the _feeling,_ dark and evil. Seokjin banishes the spell, puts the truck back into gear to head into town, and makes a note not to go back that way. Whatever wicked thing lives in the forest, it's found a way into the human community, and Seokjin wants no part in that. No part at all.

~

He fills the bed of the truck with hundreds of dollars worth of non-perishables. Taehyung's magic will keep them safe in the pantry for as long as they want to keep them for, so he tries not to worry about it too much when he checks the expiration dates and finds some of them worryingly close. He's trying not to worry about anything but he keeps thinking about those men out by the trailer, the black rabbit and the thing with the teeth.

Seokjin makes his way back up the mountain the long way round and when he gets there, when he gets back to their squat little house, he magics all the food inside and goes to their ancient rotary telephone. Taehyung is asleep on the long wooden couch near the woodstove, his head cradled on a throw pillow. Seokjin smiles as he looks at him, jerks a little when the phone is picked up.

 _Hello?_ The voice on the other side of the line says.

“Namjoon, hey,” Seokjin says, licking his lips.

 _Hey,_ Namjoon replies. _What's up? What's wrong?_

“What's that supposed to mean,”

_You only call me when something's wrong. Why don't you just use the mirror?_

“...Because something's wrong,” he sighs, and Namjoon laughs. “Listen, I went down into town today, and I saw. Well. I'm not sure what it was but it was _bad._ Living in the humans with a captive, it looked like.”

 _What did it seem like?_ Namjoon asked. _Should I be sending in a hunter or a priest?_

“I don't know,” Seokjin admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. “Both? It... It was really dark, Namjoon, whatever it was is really, really evil. I can't tell if it's possessing a human body or if it really is in there.”

 _I can come down in a few days,_ Namjoon replies. _I'll bring a shaman and a priest to cover our bases?_

“Bring the hunters too,” Seokjin says. “I'll set up the tent for you. I... I don't have any lost love for the mundies but that thing scared me, Namjoon. It saw my third eye from half a mile away.”

Namjoon makes a noise of concern. _All right. We'll be there. I'll bring a whole posse, it'll be like old times. I don't think you've met my new associates though, not since the last time I saw you. I'll send you pictures of them for when they get there, probably in a couple of days._

“Thank you,” Seokjin says, and hangs up the phone. Taehyung is awake now, rubbing at his eyes and squinting over at him.

“Ws'rong?” he slurs, shaking the last of his dreams away.

“Nothing, sweetheart,” he murmurs, licking his lips and hoping he's not lying. “Nothing you have to worry about at all.”

 


	6. decay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything starts to fall apart around them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter has warnings for partner abuse, though nothing too graphic.

Everything starts to fall apart around them.

There is mold in the walls. Yoongi watches it creep across the world inside their apartment, and what had once been a haven has become a prison. Hongbin is out more and more, his eyes strange and glassy and Yoongi hates that he is afraid, hates that Hongbin frightens him, that their sex has become violent and unbalanced. There is nothing of the affection Yoongi has always felt for Hongbin, there is nothing of that tender budding love he'd dared to entertain when they'd finally moved in together not a year before, before that moment out in the woods, before Hongbin came back from one of his trips and couldn't stop shivering from cold.

It's all different now. Now they hurt one another. Hongbin's sharp teeth rip at his skin and Yoongi claws at his back and scalp and then they come back to themselves they are unable to speak, horrified and afraid of what is happening to them.

Yoongi has long, vivid nightmares of being fucked by scores of demons—punishment for his homosexuality, for his willful disobedience against God and all he's ever learned to be. In his dreams the monsters use him, they rip him to shreds and all the while his mother screams that he is the spawn of the devil and somehow that hurts more than the pain of being unwillingly...

Hongbin doesn't come home for long stretches of time, now. He leaves with his camera and not much else and he is gone for days. They are quietly evicted when Yoongi misses a rent payment because he doesn't know what day it is. Their landlord is sympathetic but afraid, and Yoongi can't blame her. He just nods to her statement, takes the eviction notice from her hands and starts to pack what few things they have. It's not much. It all fits in Hongbin's truck, and they drive it to the trailer park, where one of Hongbin's father's friends has generously let them rent the trailer for below cost, because he feels bad for them, because he's known Hongbin for most of his life and pities what the two of them have clearly become—degenerates of the worst kind, decadents, ruined pieces of human filth that don't deserve to live, but also don't deserve to die.

They live miserably. Yoongi picks up smoking and stops eating. He feels like the inside of his body is eating at him, he feels like his entire being is getting ripped to shreds. Hongbin bites him during sex. Bites him unforgivably hard and Yoongi shrieks. The first few times he's tried to squirm away from Hongbin's teeth but now he just lets him bite. Claws at his face and neck while Hongbin bruises his hips and the insides of his thighs. He cries when they lay in bed together because he's afraid of what's happening to them. Sometimes Hongbin cries too. Yoongi can hear him, in the bathroom, sobbing hysterically under the water of the shower. Hongbin hates it when people see him cry. He spent so much of his childhood crying, in pain and neglect and sadness. Sometimes Yoongi sits outside the door and leans against it and wishes he could be so close to Hongbin, wishes he could... Could touch him, could love him as purely as he had when they'd first gotten out of high school and the world was still in front of them.

It feels as though the world is above them, now. Hundreds of thousands of miles above and there's no way Yoongi can reach.

Sometimes, Hongbin comes home and he's so tired. Yoongi goes to his job at the gas station, Hongbin goes out... Wherever he goes, and sometimes when he comes home he crawls into the bed, unshaven and unclean, and he makes love with Yoongi like they used to, though he still never says the words. Yoongi grabs at him, feels his stubble and the greasy mess of his hair and loves him anyway because that's what you do—you love them, anyway. That's the way it's supposed to be. Love is supposed to be acceptance and compromise and...

Yoongi attempts to go back to church. He puts on his nice button-down and cleanest jeans, he sits in the back pew and mouths the words to prayers, the words to hymns he used to love to sing. He feels like a puppet on strings when he takes the wafer and puts it on his tongue. It burns. He stays in the church for longer than he should, bent onto the pews, hands clasped in prayer. _Please,_ he begs God, who hates him for being gay, who hates him for seeking love with another man instead of a woman. Who hates the sound of his voice and will never give him perfect pitch because gay people don't go to Heaven they go to Hell, where they are punished for being what they are. He feels like a small and unwanted child. _Please don't abandon me. Please, I need you now. I'm afraid. I'm afraid and alone and I need you._

There is never any answer and, after weeks of attempting, he stops going. God, if he's there, has forgotten him. Has decided that he, a _filthy faggot heathen,_ is not worthy of forgiveness or love and Yoongi feels his dreams of Heaven, of love and light eternal, slipping through his fingers like so much sand. His mother had been right after all. Perhaps he is spawn of the Devil. How else could he be so dirty as to be unworthy of Gods love? How else could he be able to see the blessing of redemption, but remain unable to reach it?

He tries not to think about that right now. Hongbin is with him, and the love washes over him like it always does, heavy and drowning. Hongbin's hands are so gentle, no matter how cold they are. His hands feel like dead things but their touch is tender and Yoongi rolls his body in Hongbin's lap, one arm around his shoulder, the other pressed against his back. His legs are open and the angle is awkward but their chests are pressed together and they're kissing one another, properly kissing, and Yoongi wouldn't trade it for the world. The last seven months have been pure hell. They've both turned twenty, their lives have crumbled, but at the very least, they still have one another, if nothing else.

Right now, Hongbin is holding on to Yoongi like he is all there is in the world, kissing his neck and lips and holding him tight. He is whispering that he is perfect, that he wouldn't let go of him for anything, that he would die for him, _kill_ for him, and Yoongi is drinking in the words, letting them fill the empty spaces in his soul where rot has settled, like it settled in the walls of their apartment, like it's settling into the walls of this trailer. Everywhere he looks is rot and filth. Everywhere he turns is misery and fear except for Hongbin, except for this one soft light that even now is fading from his vision.

This isn't the way it's supposed to be. They aren't supposed to love one another like this. But if it's all Yoongi will be given then it's all he will have. It's better than nothing.

 


	7. passing the crown

He knew the boy would come into the woods when it was time. He knew that, at his time of dying, a boy of fourteen would make his way through the vine-wrought trees and find him, panting, surrounded by the murder of his Court. He knew, too, that the boy would beg for them to stave off their vicious pecking, their rending of his pelt and eyes, because he did not know him, and did not know his court.

Still, the boy was softer than he had imagined. A pale boy with eyes like bark-brown marbles, a boy with a tremble in his lip as he collapsed beside him, rested a hand on his neck and tried to shift his great head onto his tiny lap.

Such a warm child. Such a _good_ child. The world had chosen well.

He felt the last of the magic ripple through him. All things died, but he had to explain to the boy, the frightened boy, whose eyes were wide with awe. How he had missed that expression on the face of his dear mortals. How he had missed that sweet, sweet face full of adoration.

“Jimin,” he rasps, because the boys name is natural to him as the last of his breathing. “Jimin.”

“S. Sir?” the boy whispers, his hair hanging long about his sweet face. He looks like a forest creature, with his arms wrapped in leathers and his neck strung with beads made of wood and crystal. “...My Lord?” his voice is the sweetest touch of southern wind.

“You know me,” he laughs, breathless, all the wind leaving his chest. Most of the children do not know him now. He is so ancient that he is without name, without face: a pale stag, crowned in starlight. But he is dying now, and the boy has come, as foretold to him by an oracle many ages past.

“I know you, my Lord,” the boy, Jimin, says, and he cradles his head, small hands reverent and gentle. He feels his antlers clatter to the ground and gropes for them, blindly. The boy brings them to his hand and he presses the bone against Jimin, his breath coming so much shorter now.

“They are yours now,” he pants, feeling his spirit trying to flee the mortal body, but there is so much to tell the boy. So much he should know, so much he cannot learn from anyone else. “They are yours, Jimin, wear—wear them. The forest, she...” he coughs, tasting blood in the back of his throat but he cannot leave yet, he cannot _leave._ “She will obey you. She must. She and all her creatures.”

“What?” Jimin is staring down at him with his face streaked with tears. His chest is jumping, and he is clearly trying very hard not to cry. “Lord, I,”

“Come here,” he whispers, and Jimin bends his head. His hair is lovely, thick and dark like a night sky and in it, he fancies he can see the sparkle of stars. He kisses his forehead, long and soft, trying to give Jimin all he will need to know, trying to make sure that he does as much as he can for his successor in this, his dying moment. “And now,” his voice is nearly not there. Jimin is staring down at him, and tears drip onto his face. Mortal tears. He had forgotten how warm they are. “Now, you are the King,” he says, and he smooths Jimin's hair with a weak hand. He tries to be comforting. It is a huge responsibility, a great power he lays on the boys narrow shoulders. “You are the King, Jimin Park.”

All the forest seems to call out in unison, all the creatures: bears and beetles and birds, the quiet magical things in hollows and groves, the deer and the faries who sparkle around them now, as the forest creates of itself a proper dying place, allowing the sun to come through her branches to light their skin with warmth. In the beauty of the sun, he hears the crows call. It is thunderous, mourning, and brilliant.

_HAIL._

“No,” Jimin whispers, clutches tightly to him. “No, I don't—please, I'm,”

_HAIL._

“Please don't go, I,”

_HAIL._

He smiles up at him, cups his cheek in one hand. He remembers now, his human name. How funny it is that he should share heritage with this boy who takes his place. How funny that he had come from the far east and this boy lives in the far west and does not speak the language he has been speaking, but the language of the trees and the birds is inherent to all Lords of the Forest, and Jimin has taken his place. Even now, on his head and through his hair weaves a tangle of starlight.

“Be good, Jimin,” he says. “Be...” But his voice is gone. It has fled, as his spirit is fleeing, and for a moment he is gifted with a vision of such splendor he almost cannot bear to look.

Jimin is a man, in his vision. Grown, and strong. He leaps through the trees with a laugh on his mouth and a man beside him, a man in black who carries a staff. They radiate happiness, power and love.

_ALL HAIL THE KING._

And where they walk, flowers bloom.

 

 


	8. blessed be the servants of the lord

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He learned that the implement Father Benedictus had given him was not meant to channel the power of God as the Church knew him, but God in all his raw, fierce power. God as the Clock Maker, the supreme creator of all.

“—and the Holy Spirit, amen.”

Hoseok rises from where he is kneeling before his small alter and smiles, sadly. Another one lost, that day. Faith utterly abandoned. He sighs and moves away, adjusts his collar and reaches for his implement. Its weight is comfortable in his hand, the tall oak staff carved with quiet runes. It had been given to him by Father Benedictus when he was first and last in Rome. _Brother Auriel,_ he'd said. _In the places where you walk, you shall need this tool. Use it, and let its light guide you._

Hoseok had not long thereafter been excommunicated for participating in an exorcism. The boy had lived, but Hoseok had taken the brunt of the blame for the blunder of the priests who came before him. He'd taken his implement and left the church feeling very abandoned and hated. He'd spent weeks locked in his home in England before a vision came to him of the crooked, narrow streets of Boston Chinatown, and it was there that he eventually traveled. He took up residence as a theology student, enjoyed his life and classes immensely. He'd met Namjoon there, a fellow student, and through Namjoon met Jimin and realized that the world he'd stepped into when he came to Boston was unlike anything he'd expected to experience. There was true magic in the world, and Gods presence could not shield people from all of it. So he adapted.

He learned that the implement Father Benedictus had given him was not meant to channel the power of God as the Church knew him, but God in all his raw, fierce power. God as the Clock Maker, the supreme creator of all. The first time he'd been forced to use the staff, Hoseok had felt the presence of God himself, a bright, white-hot light inside of him that used his body to smite an unrighteous creature from the surface of the earth. He'd nearly died, Jimin said. The strain on his body had been so intense that his hair turned pale yellow and his eyes lightened to a frightening, tigers-eye amber.

Hoseok looks at himself in the mirror. He knows that the light of God shines from him. The holy can see it, as can the unholy. The righteous come to him for care and he gives it, quietly and as anonymously as he can. He doesn't want sainthood; he wants to do what he knows is right and just and loving. He is thankful every day for the thought of Jimin, who reminds him of that. Jimin, who lives with the deer in the form of a great tawny stag; whose magic is so very green and bright but just as real as the power Hoseok wields inside of him.

Namjoon had told him to go to the mountain town, and so he would. He just has to gather the last of his things and meet Jimin.

His book, bell and candle are tucked into his satchel, as are his Latin bible and a few vials of holy water. Beside those are his crossbow and blessed bolts, tipped in silver and wrapped in threads of iron. Hoseok has seen enough devilment to know that it's best to use tools that will effect many monsters instead of specializing. His implement, though, is enough for most.

He climbs into his car, double checks his equipment. He taps the Evil Eye hanging from his rearview to remind it that he appreciates it's hard work and starts off. He knows where he's going without needing to have been there; Namjoon had told him, and everything Namjoon tells is remembered and known. That is one of his gifts and curses, being unable to forget anything, and the power to relay that information to others if he so wishes.

It doesn't take more than a few hours to get to the forest where Jimin has been making his home. It's relatively small, and Hoseok waits in the dirt parking lot as the morning sun touches the tops of the pine trees. Jimin eventually emerges, wrapped in leather and bone and wooden beads. He smiles and Hoseok sees the sun.

“Hoseok,” he says, and Hoseok offers his arms for an embrace so tight it should hurt. He feels their magic mingling, feels white and green braiding together in comfort and affection. “I've missed you so, my friend.”

“I wish we were meeting under better circumstances,” Hoseok confesses, pulling back to kiss Jimin's soft, soft mouth. He tastes like pine sap and wildflower honey. His lips are tender as they smile and Hoseok feels the warmth of Gods love radiating through him. His God is a God of love, warmth, charity and forgiveness. His God approves of his affection for Jimin, even encourages it, which is sometimes a little embarrassing. Having a great cosmic entity rooting for the relationship he craves is a bit like having an overexcited parent, Hoseok feels.

“As do I,” he says, sighing as he pulls away. “Let me get my things in, and we can go.”

Jimin's implements, his tools, are very different from Hoseoks. Things of ancient, earthbound religion, when humans believed that spirits lived in everything and the only way to appease them was to be respectful. That rule still holds true, though so few believe it now. Jimin, though, has managed to harness that magic and it seems as though for force of his belief is what keeps him going, though he is so young. Only a year younger than Hoseok but still, he seems like a child in his wonderment and love of the world.

The drive is quiet. The two of them hold hands in the middle of the bench seat and make small conversation about Namjoon, about the place they are going. Jimin shudders to think of what might live in the dark trees, while Hoseok has no idea what they could be facing.

“Namjoon said it was a witch who told him,” Jimin says, and Hoseok nods. “You're not going to go throwing holy water on them, are you?”

“Unless they're performing human sacrifices? Of course not,” Hoseok laughs. “You know I've no quarrel with good people.” Hoseok has met good people who believe nothing. Good witches, good sorcerers, good houngans. He has met wicked priests, people who manipulate the power of God to their own advantage and he has been used to smite them from the earth. But good people? No, Hoseok has no quarrel with them at all. He has seen the magic of a well-meaning witch, has even seen it gone awry, but with no negative intent. The rule seems to hold for most: _And ye harm none, do what ye will._ He appreciates that. It's a good rule to live by.

Hoseok flips the headlights on as the road north grows darker. “How long are we going to be on the road?” Jimin asks. Hoseok shrugs.

“Feels like maybe five more hours? It's so far north it might as well be Canada.... Namjoon said he'd meet us there tomorrow, but we're going to the witches home.” Jimin nods.

The drive is quiet. The roads grow less and less populated the further they went, until they are abandoned completely, it seems. Hoseok watches the moon rise, squeezes Jimin's hand when he shifts uncomfortably. He wants to be out in the woods, Hoseok knows that. Everything in Jimin wants always to be out in the woods in the dark and the trees, out in the beautiful forests he holds so close to his heart when he wears his antlers and becomes the pale stag.

But everything shifts when they reach the peaks near the town they are heading for. Jimin shrinks away from the window, his hand tightens anxiously around Hoseoks, and Hoseok can feel the malevolence, insidious as poison, leaking into the world around him. It becomes overpowering the closer they get—Jimin shivers and whimpers and hides, tucking himself into the seat below the window as they drive around a bare hilltop crowned in a split boulder the size of a bull elephant. It is the size of the world to Hoseok, and radiates an aura so oppressive, so completely evil that his skin starts to glow in battle-readiness. He feels better as soon as it's out of sight. They drive up the south side of a large mountain, but Jimin can't stop shaking.

“That was so evil,” Jimin whispers, as though afraid to speak at a higher volume. “Oh sweet Lord, Hoseok. Could you feel it, it was so...” he trails off and Hoseok knows that he is crying, wiping at his eyes. “Such wickedness, such... Hateful _malice_.”

“Yeah,” Hoseok grinds out, tense all over as they drive. They approach the gate—a pair of oak trees that form an arch over a low dirt road, and he feels the gate hesitate before unlocking, letting them into the secret place beyond. Almost immediately he feels his tension lessen, and Jimin sits up to look out the window once more. He sees the faeries in the trees, sees the little woodland spirits climbing out on branches and waving, their little heads tick tick ticking to one side and echoing like tiny bells. They drive up to a squat little house with two large gaslights on either side of the door, and Hoseok cuts the engine. Two men emerge.

One of them is wearing a long, emerald green robe. The other is dressed in jeans and a pale pink sweater and both of them are bare-footed in the late summer air. The taller one waves, while the narrower one comes up to the car and offers out his arms to help as Hoseok and Jimin climb out. “Hello,” he chirps, the sound birdlike and sweet. Hoseok smiles gently.

“Hello, friend,” he says, and he offers a bag to him, which he takes with a happy smile. “It is good to meet you.”

“I wish the circumstances weren't so bad,” the young man says, taking one of Jimin's bags easily from the back seat before waving them towards the house. The other man waits patiently on the porch and when they approach, Hoseok sees that he is radiating an aura of confidence and warmth. “This is Seokjin,” he says, and pauses. “And I'm Taehyung.”

“Hoseok,” Hoseok says. “And this is Jimin.”

Awkward introductions taken care of, Seokjin moves out of the way of the door. “Namjoon and the others won't be here until tomorrow,” he says, leading them to a bedroom on the left side of the house. “So you'll be staying in here for the night. I'm sorry for the clutter.”

The clutter doesn't bother Hoseok. Neither does the presence of obviously witchy tools. Rather he feels comforted by them, by the assurance that Namjoon had been speaking the truth, that these men were Good.

“This is a lovely home,” Jimin remarks, smiling up at the old wooden rafters, the herbs hanging to dry, the charms and spells with their small bells attached. “What bright magic.”

“We've worked hard,” Seokjin smiles, and Taehyung grins.

“We've made dinner,” he says. “So if you want to eat, come and do so, please.”

“We?” Seokjin asks, his voice warm with laughter. “You did nothing but set the table.”

“I _helped,_ ” Taehyung whines, and Hoseok smiles as Seokjin and Taehyung make their way, bickering, back down the hall to the living room.

“I like them,” Jimin says, smiling a little himself, unable to help himself from doing so. Hoseok looks over at him and feels again that wave of affection he can never quite hold down when he looks at Jimin.

“I do too,” he says, and it's very true, indeed.

 


	9. the loop and the guard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We're driving in fuckin' circles,” Jeongguk points out, and Sanghyuk groans, pulling off the side of the road.

“We're driving in fuckin' circles,” Jeongguk points out, and Sanghyuk groans, pulling off the side of the road. They're back at the sign again, and Sanghyuk is starting to feel like he's trapped in a video game or something. “The fuck is going on?”

“I have no idea,” Sanghyuk admits. “We're here to beasthunt, Jeongguk, not to figure out what magical mumbo-jumbo bullshit might be happening.”

Jeongguk gives him a look that would wither flowers. Sanghyuk shrugs.

“It ain't mumbo-jumbo bullshit,” Jeongguk sulks as he makes his way to the sign, touches it carefully. “You know it ain't.”

Sanghyuk knows it isn't. He knows that Jeongguk grew up wild in the southern swamps, knows he's a mix of blood and magic almost wholly unnatural. That's what makes him such a good beasthunter, his wildness. But sometimes Sanghyuk wishes he was a normal person. Sanghyuk is completely normal. Grew up on the coast in south New Jersey, took up beasthunting when he found himself face-to-face with a jersey devil and killed it with the large walking stick he'd been carrying.

(okay so perhaps he's not _completely_ normal but he's more normal than Jeongguk and that's all that matters. not to say that's... much of a scale, to be honest.)

He feels a little bad for hurting Jeongguks feelings, so he walks up behind him and holds him, slides his hands into his front pockets and sways their bodies together in a comforting motion like the roll of wind. “Sorry,” he says, with great sincerity. “What are you doin?”

“Tryin'a see why we can't get through,” Jeongguk sighs. “But it ain't nothing I've seen before. S'like... this huge demonic presence. Like the world. Jimin's in there, ain't he?”

“S'what Namjoon said.”

“He must be goin' outta his gaddam mind,” Jeongguk mutters. “How can you not feel it, s'so fuckin' evil. Like the Devil hisself got roots here.”

Jeongguk's accent is coming up, thick and irritated. Sanghyuk normally thinks it's very cute, his little southern baby partner, but sometimes it's frightening. Sometimes when that skull paints itself onto Jeongguks skin it's scarier than it has any right to be. He can see the shadow of the bones, lacing over Jeongguk's fingers as he gets more and more confused by the magic he's touching. Sanghyuk holds onto him until the magic lashes out against his curiosity and both of them are thrown back with so much force that Sanghyuk hits the front end of his car and Jeongguk is thrown over him up onto the windshield.

“Holy _shit,_ ” Sanghyuk snarls. He's not a houngan but he's also not a fucking idiot, so he scrambles into the drivers seat even as Jeongguk throws himself into the passenger. He spins the car, kicks up dirt and forest debris in his rush to get the hell away from the place.

He risks a glance over at Jeongguk, sees that he is in full War Paint. Well... Sanghyuk calls it war paint. What it _is_ is the presence of a Loas power, something he's called on consciously or even unconsciously to protect him in his time of need. He'll have to pay for it later, but it probably kept his neck from being broken when he hit the windshield, when his head snapped against the metal framing. He's panting, and his eyes are sparkling like violet crystals as he struggles for air.

“What the _fuck_ was that,” he asks, eyes on the rearview as he speeds away, hoping to god they don't end up back at the sign, back where they started, back inside that things reach.

“I dunno,” Jeongguk is trying to get a rein on his breathing, and the war paint is fading from his body, his resemblance to a skeleton fading away. Sanghyuk breathes a sign of relief, as he always does. One of these days, a loa is going to mount Jeongguk and it's gonna decide it doesn't want to leave, take his body as payment for the favors it gives.

“We gotta call Namjoon,” Sanghyuk pants, his hands shaking on the steering wheel. “We gotta call him, call him, now—I'll find us a hotel or something, I ain't gonna try n'get back in there today.” Jeongguk is already fumbling for the phone. Namjoon answers, and Sanghyuk only hears one side of the conversation.

“ _Namjoon,_ ” he says, his breath shuddering. “Namjoon, we just got outta that place—it's all blocked off, all'a it, s'all wrapped up like a goddamn—yeah, the place wouldn't let us through, musta known we was there t—no. No, s'demonic, definitely, fuckin' strong as hell. No, we're gonna go to a hotel or sumthin' n.... Yeah. A'right. Yeah, Ill text you the place when we get there. Yeah. Drive safe.”

“What'd he say,” Sanghyuk asks.

“Wanted t'know what it was, if we were gonna try'n stay. Course not, we ain't stupid,” Jeongguk scoffs and Sanghyuk fights back the somewhat hysterical urge to laugh.

They reach the next town without incident. They find a motel. And when they slide into the room, shivering and afraid, Sanghyuk lines the room with salt, and Jeongguk covers the doorframe and windowsills with brickdust and both of them hang a charm at the head of the bed for safety. “Jesus,” Jeongguk pants as he pulls off his clothes and scratches at his skin. He's hellishly bruised, like something huge grabbed him around the waist and squeezed. Sanghyuk winces, touches his waist. “Jesus'n all Saints, that... Fuck,” he's trembling violently now. Sanghyuk is used to this. Jeongguk doesn't panic until after the fact. In action he's a monster, all instinct and power, but outside of that he's a goddamned kid just like Sanghyuk is and he reaches to take his hand, to pull him into a hug, tight and warm. Jeongguk drops his head to Sanghyuk's shoulder and for a long time they just stand there in the dimly lit motel room.

“M'so glad you couldn't feel that,” Jeongguk finally says. “M'so fuckin' glad.”

“You gonna be okay,” Sanghyuk asks, and Jeongguk hesitates before nodding, turning his head so his forehead is against Sanghyuks neck. Sanghyuk kisses his ear, holds him close. “I gotcha, Jonny, I gotcha.” It was what the people at the tradepost used to call him. Little Jonny South. He'd been fifteen, standing there in his brown clothes and his little hostel room full of left-handed magic but Sanghyuk, who had been seventeen, knew power when he saw it. The two of them trained together, hunted together and eventually, safe in a well-lit bedroom in a bed lined with spells, they'd had raw, bright sex. Just the once. The once had been enough for both of them, then. It... Closed a deal, as it were. They were partners. They'll always be partners, until one of them dies.

“Shit,” Jeongguk hisses, and his hands fist up in Sanghyuk's shirt. “ _Shit._ ”

 


	10. men with familiars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He has not thought about the place in the mountains since he's been there. He has a vague memory of a rabbit, of a boy, but nothing more.

He has not thought about the place in the mountains since he's been there. He has a vague memory of a rabbit, of a boy, but nothing more. He thinks nothing of it—he remembers many strange things from his dreams—until Namjoon stalks into the building they use as headquarters with his teeth bared like a grimace, his familiar trotting behind him. The creature is a strange thing, not quite a griffon; it is a big cat, a cougar perhaps, or a panther, with huge wings and three tails, each tipped with a stinger like a scorpion. It had appeared, Wonsik understood, when Namjoon was _eight._ Clearly his imagination has always been brilliant, but the creature unnerves him now as it sits near Namjoons desk, uncomfortably strange in such a mundane background. His own bobcat grooms itself fastidiously, unimpressed.

“What's wrong,” Wonsik asks, and Namjoon flaps his hands.

“There's this—there's this place in the mountains, where Seokjin moved to—he says there's something there, but I can't _get there._ The hunters are going in circles around the place, they keep coming back to the road sign. I'm going to have to go, physically—today if I can, I,” Namjoon is frantically packing a bag full of papers and charms and Wonsik frowns.

“In the mountains?”

“Yes,”

“I'll go with you,” he says, without knowing why.

“What?”

“I'll go with you,” Wonsik affirms, feeling confident in his decision, though he isn't sure why. “If the hunters are having trouble you might need help, right?”

“I'm really not sure—” Namjoon looks at him and Wonsik cocks his eyebrow up as far as he can beneath his silver hair. Namjoon deflates. “I guess I'll take all the help I can. I can't reach Seokjin. I can't reach Jimin or Hoseok either. It's like the place... Folded in around them, or something. I can't even scry it, Wonsik, it's just _not there._ ”

Unable to scry...

“I told Sanghyuk and Jeongguk to wait in the next town over, they got a motel room so we're going to meet them there.”

Unable to _see..._

Something is digging in at the edge of his consciousness. Walking through the woods. Following his bobcats frantic cries. Finding... a boy? A huge stone. A devilsnake, a hydra with a hundred heads, laughing at the boys powerlessness. A familiar, or something like one, large but weak. A suffocating feeling.

The thoughts are fleeting and slip from his gasp as he tries to close his fingers around them.

_I'll come back. In the day._

He'd meant to go back. But there had been nothing to go back _to._ The town was gone, the stone was gone, there was nothing but dark, dense trees and a strange ring of... Of birch trees. Of course. A Gate. But not the kind that protected a witches house or the home of a powerful magical creature. A Gate made by another, more ancient evil. Primordial.

“Lets go,” Wonsik said, dread settling in the pit of his stomach. “We need to go. Now.”

“Well yeah,” Namjoon says.

“No,” Wonsik replies, magicking everything he needs into the bag. “No, Namjoon, _now._ It's—it's a Gate, the whole place is a Gate, there's a Lord of Hell guarding it, we need to _go._ ”

He's glad, as they all but run out of the building to Namjoon's truck, that Namjoon thought to call a priest and send him ahead. They'll need a priest. They'll need a great many more things, but a priest will certainly help.

 


	11. old witch mamie madison

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hongbin just turned seven last week. His auntie gave him a camera and today, today he's sneaking out of the house to use it.

Hongbin just turned seven last week. His auntie gave him a camera and today, today he's sneaking out of the house to use it. It's early, the sound of night insects still buzzing as he makes his way down the path out towards the swamp with his flashlight, his bag of snacks and water, and his camera and lots of film. He packed it all last night so he could just slip out. He's always been precocious, prone to wandering. His parents don't care much. They're too busy hating one another to care much about what happens to him.

He walks the dim path easily. He's been out here dozens of times. He's not scared of the alligators or the snakes, he's not scared of the broken-handed trees or the murky, rusted water. He's not even scared of old witch Mamie Madison. That's where he's going, out to her house. It's a big plantation place, and he always finds her on the front porch. Sometimes she lets him in for lemonade or tea but she never lets him past the kitchen, and lives in the front rooms. She's got a long garden full of flowers and Hongbin wants to ask if he can take pictures of them, and the huge butterflies that settle on the blossoms. Then there's the wide old swamp. The Dismal Swamp, it's called. Full of bare cypress and ancient trees so big around Hongbin can't even imagine reaching around it, even if he held all his classmates hands. They're the size of the world.

Mamie Madison is already sitting out on her porch when Hongbin gets there. She's brown-skinned and old, leathery in her light, airy clothes, and Hongbin adores her much more than he loves his own mother. She waves him closer and he runs to her, skips up the steps and straight into her arms as she sits up to cradle him.

“There you are, Bean,” she says. “I thought you's might never get here! You're three minutes late!”

“I ain't not,” Hongbin pouts, and Mamie Madison pushes back his hair. Smiles at him and Hongbin feels very loved and unconsciously wishes, for a terrible moment, that his mother looked at him like that. “I ain't late,” he says, more subdued.

“Of course you ain't, buttercup,” she says, kissing his hair. “Now. I see you got yourself a camera. For your birthday, right?”

“Yes Miss Madison,” he says, and he kicks at the flaking wood of the porch. “N'I's wunderin...”

“Speak up, Bean, I can't hear you.”

“I's wonderin' if I could take pictures'a y'r garden,” he slurs a little, excited and embarrassed for not speaking clearly the first time. Mamie Madison makes him want to get things right the first time, every time. He wants to impress her, wants her to be proud of him.

“Course you can, Bean,” she says, and she hauls herself up out of her chair while Hongbin holds her hand, her little retainer and helper. She walks with him around to the back of the house, close to the swampwater. The garden grows up from the swamp to the entire back of the house and, just like Hongbin had thought, everything is in bright bloom. He pulls out his camera and takes in the beautiful sight. Asters, mulberries and scarlet bergamot, firewheels, bluebells and catchflies. Roses and daylillies and black-eyed-susans, hounds tongue, leopard flowers and giant swaths of azaleas. It's a rainbow of ethereal color and Hongbin gasps to see it all in the morning daylight, the petals kissed with dew and shining like the stars themselves have settled in the blossoms.

Then he sees it, through his messy, tangled hair and the haze of steam in the early morning, he sees... Something magical. Something that changes his life.

Right in front of him, settled in the open mouth of a violent orange hell vine blossom, is a faerie. Orange-skinned, black-haired, with wings like a dragonfly. Enchanted, believing utterly in what his eyes can see as children always do, Hongbin brings his camera up to his eye. Focuses the lens very, very carefully, because he wants to have a clear picture to show Mamie when he's done, because there's magic in her garden and she probably doesn't even know it! Hongbin holds his breath. He snaps a picture.

The garden explodes into wings and tiny shrieking noises. Faeries leap from every bloom, jumping and laughing and pulling at Hongbin's hair, at his clothes. He cries out, drops his camera and flails against their vicious little hands. They pull him towards the water, and Mamie Madison is getting old, now. It's hard for her to work magic like she used to. Hongbin screams for her, but by the time her hand hits the water, he's gone.

Hongbin has been pulled into the swamp. His camera is on the shore.

~

Hongbin wakes up on a clay shore. His elbows and knees hurt, and he immediately starts to cry, because nothing is familiar, because he's afraid and covered in bites and pinches, little red blossoms of pain on his skin where the faeries had grabbed him. Everything looks wrong. It's all the wrong color, it's all... Too bright. He sniffles and tries very hard not to cough or choke.

There is laughter all around him, from the bushes and the trees. It sounds like when he gets laughed at at school, just out of his vision. At school he tries to keep his brave face on, just like his father tells him but out here, wherever he is, he just cries. He rubs at his eyes with his hands and spreads wet clay over his face, getting into his eyelashes and nose. He crawls to the edge of the swamp and blindly fumbles to put his hands in it through the sharp reeds, to bring water up to wash out his eyes.

With his head so close to the water, he hears the unmistakable growl of an alligator. Wet and low and terrifying. He kneels very still, his eyes closed, and bites into his lip, hard. Then, there are footsteps behind him and someone grabs his collar and something snaps at his hair and he screams, hysterical as his eyes open and he sees it—a huge albino gator with eyes like pink jewels and teeth brown with rot. It steers off into the water and Hongbin looks up in terror to see...

To see a man with a foxish face and dark hair. Beside him is a man with tanned skin and both of them are looking at him like they have no idea what he's doing there, or how he got there. Hongbin realizes that he's wet his pants, and it makes him cry even more.

“Leo,” the golden man says, his voice thick with concern. “He's. Not supposed to be here.”

“I realize that,” Leo says, his voice dry as he hauls Hongbin up to his feet and brushes off the dry clay from his shirt, the wetness from his pants like it had never been there. Hongbin hiccups weakly and the golden man kneels before him, cooing, embracing him. It's like sitting in the sun in the fall when there's no moving air.

“Oh, oh shh, you're all right. He won't hurt you, he can't get you here.”

Hongbin wants to ask where _here_ is, what's happening, but he can't talk. Instead he just looks up at the golden man and sniffles miserably. He wants Mamie. He wants to go _home._

“Unbelievable,” Leo says, quietly. He kneels in front of Hongbin and pushes back his hair. “That's... Remarkable. En, look.”

En looks up and blinks, clearly startled. “Oh,” he says. “Oh, that's... That's dangerous, Leo.”

“Yes,” Leo agrees, and he lets Hongbin's bangs down. “Give me your hand, boy.”

“He has a _name,_ ” En insists. “What is your name, mayflower?”

“....hongbin,” he says, after a long moment of silence. “Hongbin Lee. But Ev'yone calls me Bean.”

“Hongbin,” Leo says, offering out his hand. “Give me your hand, please.”

“Wh, why?” Hongbin asks, face screwing up and feeling like he's going to cry again.

“I'm going to send you home, that's all. Back to... Where you were.”

“To Miss Mamie's house?”

“Yes,” Leo says, and he takes Hongbin's hand in his.

Something... Happens. Hongbin isn't able to really describe it, and never will be, but something washes over him and he feels a part of himself like a door closing and locking. Something that should have been accessible is no longer accessible and for a long, long time to come, he will forget it was ever there at all.

“Be safe, dear,” En says, kissing Hongbin's head.

Then Hongbin is bursting out of the water and scrambling for Mamie Madison's hand. She pulls him into her lap, clasps him to her chest and rocks him, thumps his back until all the swamp water is spat up brown all over them. He hugs her as tightly s he's ever hugged anyone in his life.

“Oh, oh Bean, what happened?” she kisses his hair and Hongbin... He can't remember. Something happened, surely, he didn't just fall in the swamp for no reason, but... He can't remember why. He shakes his head and looks over at his camera, lets out a sound of distress to see that it's popped open, and the film is ruined.

Mamie wipes his eyes and helps him put new film in his camera. She makes him breakfast and gives him some dry clothes to wear while they wait for his clothes to get washed. He has to roll up the sleeves and the legs, but with camera in hand he goes to take pictures of the flowers and the butterflies and by the end of the day he's forgotten all about falling in the water and strangely enough, Mamie Madison has, too.

But she's old now, and she can't work the magic like she used to. The faeries she saw as a child are invisible to her and now they are invisible to Hongbin. No matter how many times he comes back, he doesn't see them. Though when he comes the last time—he is about to turn ten, and his parents have decided to move north to be near the rest of his father's family—Hongbin swears he sees her spirit on the porch, rocking in her chair. But Mamie's been dead six months then, and he takes a picture of her chair anyway. Takes pictures of her garden and the swamp beyond.

Takes pictures inside her house with it's yellowed, decaying walls. The waterstains leading to the back rooms where the kudzu and the wild roses have climbed through the windows to make the space their own. He takes down photographs and artwork, he takes down her hanging charms and mojo bags and, as a last thought, he takes the big book Mamie was always writing and drawing in. Her journal, she called it. He's never looked in it. Not even once. He's forgotten he has it.

He's forgotten a lot of things.

Leo and En watch with anxiety, and when the dark thing overcomes him, by the time they know what's happening and what the consequences will be, there is nothing they can do. They can only watch Mamie Madison's adopted little son walk blindly into danger, because they'd been the ones to close the eye that might have warned him.

 


	12. let love bloom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hoseok gets the distinct feeling that God is all but telling him to _get it_ and it makes him blush, furiously.

Hoseok stands over the bed. The boy is twisted hideously, screaming, and the chill of evil makes his skin crawl. But Hoseok—he's here to _help._ He's always been spiritual. Said his prayers with his mother, whispered thanks for all he's been given with complete sincerity and now... Now, he's here to help. He has been given the name _Brother Auriel,_ and he moves to kneel at the boys bedside. He is underfed, undernourished, dehydrated. Hoseok knows he must exorcise the boy of the evil, so that he might live. He has studied, he is prepared for this. He has been given the implement to assist him and still.

It takes... It takes so much.

The demon is powerful. It latches on to the light of Hoseok's soul and Hoseok lets it. He lets it leech him as it moves from the boy to his body and he waves a hand to the other priests—Father Dominico and Father Malloy—to get the boy away. One hand struggles for his staff, and the second his hand closes around it, the demon _burns._

The holy fire envelops Hoseok completely. He can't get away from it. He screams and it burns him as it banishes the demon and by the time he's managed to force his hand open he is on his knees, vomiting up blood as he drops to the floor. The window has been blown out, but the room is... Mostly undamaged. Father Malloy stands in the doorway with his eyes as big as plates and Hoseok manages a weak smile, closes his eyes.

He wakes up almost ten days later, exhausted, to see the boy—Adrien Lim—sitting at his bedside, cheeks round, skin healthy. He babbles excitedly in Taiwanese-flavored English and Hoseok smiles because the boy is alight and alive. He's alive because Hoseok saved him.

But he is also greeted with his notice of excommunication. The priesthood is displeased with his actions and consider him to be a rogue. He is no longer welcome in the church. He spends a very long time looking over that letter. Long after Adrien has gone home he rubs his fingers against the words and absorbs their meaning. He leaves the hospital and returns to his apartment, never once making physical contact with the staff, which he tucks into a long leather bag.

There is only so long he can go without speaking to God, though. Hoseok is a man of faith and, after days and days of hesitating, he touches his staff, the staff Father Benedictus gave him in Rome.

 _Father,_ he asks, closing his eyes. _Lord who art in Heaven. I have sinned. In performing the exorcism of Adrien Lim I have disobeyed the commands of my priesthood. Lord I have sinned because I am not sorry. The boy needed help, and I knew I could give it. Forgive me, Father. I meant no harm._

Hoseok feels a warmth on his shoulder, like a supporting arm. He feels his eyes well up. _Father, did I do the right thing. Sometimes I feel like what is good and what is right are not always the same. I don't wish to give up the love I feel in your presence. I am selfish Father, but I wish also to share that love with the world._

It's all Hoseok has ever wanted, to help people feel what he feels when he talks about the love of God, who is Good. Hoseok has faith in abundance, hope and charity. He has always been bright, generous and kind. God offers him a vision: crooked streets, a Chinatown gate. A sign reading _Boston._ He has never seen a vision so clear and he holds the staff tightly to his chest and bites his lip to keep from weeping. God has not abandoned him and he begs forgiveness for his neglect and selfishness. He is wrapped in light and love eternal, and in three days he is on a plane bound for Boston, ready to start his new life.

~

He meets Namjoon in a theology class, where the two of them disagree passionately about nearly everything. Namjoon thinks that Hoseok is a clueless follower, but Hoseok thinks that Namjoon has no faith in anything he cannot see. Yet they remain friends. Good friends, actually. So good that Namjoon invites Hoseok out to his place in the woods to visit his friend Jimin.

(Hoseok realizes, looking back at this, that Namjoon had planned to shock him with the revelation of the existence of magic. Hoseok had always known magic existed, he just hadn't known there were so many _kinds._ )

Hoseok knows, as soon as he lays eyes on the white-gold stag, that it is magic. He can feel it vibrating around him as it walks towards him, its big brown eyes shining, it's rack of antlers clean. He offers out a hand and smiles, handsomely. “You can take them off, now,” he says, and he can almost hear Namjoon's jaw dropping at the stag pushes it's head into his palm. “You don't need them on.”

The stag becomes the most beautiful man Hoseok has ever seen. He is short and dark-haired and grinning like a fool over at Namjoon, who is still... Staring at the two of them. “You didn't tell me he was magic, too!” he laughs, and Namjoon splutters.

“I didn't know he was!”

~

A few nights later, Hoseok sits in his bed and looks at the staff. He pulls it into his lap. _Father,_ he asks. _Forgive my immorality. I have had... Unpure thoughts of another man._ He feels a vague sort of questioning vision. _Jimin Park has been in my thoughts. Forgive me Lord, I know it is..._ He trails off, and feels like someone is laughing at him. _What are you... What's so funny, Lord,_ he asks, frowning. _I'm trying to be serious, here._ There is an explosion of warmth in his chest, the feeling that love is to be celebrated, not hidden. It is meant to be shown to the world, to grow like flowers in the sun—not remain hidden beneath a bushel.

Hoseok gets the distinct feeling that God is all but telling him to _get it_ and it makes him blush, furiously.

Still.

He makes his way out into the woods by himself a few weeks later, implement left at home. He can still work most magics without it, and he finds Jimin easily. He doesn't ask him to change his shape as they walk slowly through the trees. He does not ask him questions, not until Jimin is shedding his antlers and turning to look at him. His body is idyllic, his musculature and skin a terrain Hoseok wants desperately to touch. Then he feels it again, that tickling sensation of someone rooting for him and he blushes.

He blushes through Jimin undressing him, through Jimin kissing his neck and sliding hands around his hips. He blushes through Jimin sucking softly at him, but does not blush when he does the same, inexperienced and sloppy, though Jimin doesn't seem to care.

When Jimin settles in his lap, when the convex curve of his backside meets the concave curve of Hoseok's hips they are cradled together and it is... It is perfect. Jimin bends down to kiss him and Hoseok feels a very human, very passionate affection slide over him, through him. Yes. Yes, he adores it so, adores Jimin, and they make love in frenzied, excited movements, laughing, rolling one another over and kissing until Hoseok's lips hurt. Hoseok laughs when he, pressed up to Jimin's back stroking his length, makes him cum and notices that where his semen hits the ground, fertile moss and flowers bloom.

Jimin laughs and blushes and Hoseok kisses him silly and the two of them are wrapped together like ribbon. After that there are times when they are apart, and times when they are together. They work to rid the world of unseen evils and when they are finished they celebrate with love. They celebrate their love.

Laying in the bedroom of Taehyung and Seokjin's house, Hoseok holds Jimin's hand and kisses his lips until they are sore and raw. From a few doors down comes the sound of the witches in coitus, and Jimin laughs, rolling to hook his leg over Hoseok's hip.

“They're charging love pendants,” Jimin whispers. “Want to see if we can help?”

“Of course,” Hoseok laughs, letting Jimin push him onto his back, lets himself be crawled all over, kissed, made love to with bites, bruises and tender licks of affection.

All the while he feels the presence of God, reassuring and bright as it had been the night he confessed his feelings and confusion.

_If, Brother Auriel, I did not mean for your love to be celebrated, I surely would not have allowed it to blossom. Let your love grow, Brother Auriel. Let it bloom._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did i mention you can all yell at me on twitter now? @iwriteausins  
> enjoy your brief flirtation with calm. the ride gets worse from here on in.


	13. wasting away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yoongi only remembers a slow slide into... Nothing. That night at the Devils Headstone and then everything is a blur. Moving. Wasting away.

Yoongi is dreaming.

He stands on the edge of a black, black lake and listens to the haunted, eldritch cries of loons. They scream and shriek and call in mourning wails across the water to one another. He looks up at the moon and see that it is clouded. He looks back down at the water and sees Hongbin. He is standing on it, looking up at the moon with his neck bent terribly, like he's been hung.

“Hongbin?” he asks, and Hongbin turns. He is covered in feathers, black and white and his eyes are a muddy, glassy red. “Bean?” he asks, stepping towards him. The water is thick like tar. Yoongi knows he's going to drown but he goes anyway. Hongbin watches him with one big, red eye as he flails to keep his head above water, trying to claw up out of the murk but unable to do so. He's so close now, so close. Hongbin is less than an arms length away but when Yoongi reaches for him, he doesn't reach back. The loons are screaming, and the whippoorwills and the barred owls are crying out in discordant wails and Yoongi can't, he can't _reach,_ and Hongbin turns to look at him and from his neck pierces shards of bone and feather. Yoongi tries to yell but the water is up to his nose and he is pulled beneath it. In a mockery or rescue his hand is grabbed just as he slips under and he feels a kiss against his knuckles before Hongbin—or whatever it is that looks like Hongbin—lets go.

Yoongi wakes up in a cold sweat, shivering and gasping for air. He's alone in the bed. There's no light coming in from outside. No stars, no streetlights, no moon. He staggers up and falls. He's so _weak._ He hasn't been to work in days, hasn't been able to get up the strength to walk out to the car, but no one's called. No one has come looking for him. He feels as though he exists in a vacuum, and the only other thing in it is Hongbin, who sometimes manages to escape the pull and flee to somewhere else.

His bracelets itch. Yoongi scratches the skin beneath them as he crawls. It's already raw with his fingernails so frequently tearing the skin. No amount of moisturizer or aloe seems to help the constant, low-grade burn. It's all he thinks about.

He hasn't been eating. He can't eat. Everything tastes like sand, crumbles in his mouth like rot. He feels so... Lost. Trapped. Even Hongbin, when he comes home, is lethargic and distracted and the two of them can't touch one another like they used to. They are like misaligned scissor blades. God, what happened?

Yoongi only remembers a slow slide into... Nothing. That night at the Devils Headstone and then everything is a blur. Moving. Wasting away. Hongbin coming home with blood on his teeth and hands, pinning Yoongi down, biting him, fucking him viciously. Yoongi screeching, clawing up his back with sharp fingernails. Not going to work, or even leaving the trailer at the base of the forest. Never seeing the sun come up, or go down. There is no direct sunlight in this place.

Sometimes Yoongi thinks that something is wrong, but other times he feels like there's no other way for things to be, because this is the way it's supposed to happen. God has abandoned him because he's gay, because he loves Hongbin, because Hongbin is a monster. His crystal ball cracked within a week of moving into this place, fractured like ice in his hands. He doesn't dare look at his tarot, not since the first reading he'd done for himself since they moved. The world is folding in around them. His body is dying.

The door swings open. Yoongi has made it to the hallway floor and is too tired to move, and he feels, more than sees, Hongbin coming toward him.

“Yoongi?” he asks, and his voice is soft. His camera is around his neck. “Yoongi. Baby, come on, get up,” Hongbin hauls Yoongi up to his feet, lifts him against his chest. Yoongi flops against him, strengthless, and lets himself be carried to the bedroom.

He falls back onto the bed and looks up at Hongbin through his greasy hair and chuckles a little when he sees that Hongbin is taking his picture. “Bean,” he rasps, reaching for him. Hongbin smiles and pulls the camera off his neck. He puts it on the bedside table and he moves in close and god, they're kissing and it's so, so good. Hongbin tastes like Pepsi and cigarettes and Yoongi finds the strength to wrap one arm around his shoulder, trying to keep him close. “Hongbin.”

“Baby,” Hongbin whispers. “Are you okay? Baby you're so _thin._ Did you eat?” He asks these things like he hasn't seen Yoongi every day for the last... However long it's been. Like it's just occurring to him now that Yoongi is wasting away.

“Can't,” he replies. “Can't. Hurts.”

“You gotta eat somethin, babe. Lemme... Maybe I gotta gatorade in the fridge, hold on, okay? I'll be right back,” Hongbin looks guilty when Yoongi whimpers in protest, trying to hold on. Hongbin carefully shrugs him off and kisses his gaunt cheek. “I'll be right back. Promise.”

Yoongi slumps back to the pillows and watches Hongbin go. He scratches at his wrists, frantic to control the wild and maddening itching beneath the iron of his bracelets. Hongbin comes back and grabs his hands to stop him. Yoongi knows he's whimpering and he can feel wet stickiness under his fingernails but god it _itches_ and he just wants it to _stop._

“You're bleeding, hold on you're bleeding,” Yoongi hears something rip. Feels the material of a t-shirt being wrapped around his wrists, protecting them from the metal and his fingers and it isn't until Hongbin wraps both wrists that he starts crying because he's scared, because he doesn't understand what's happening but Hongbin looks so strong and healthy and he's taking care of him and it just... Something about it is so fucking wrong, beneath how very _right_ he wants it to be.

“S'okay baby, m'right here, you're okay. We're okay. We're okay.”

“Bean,” Yoongi whispers, clings to Hongbin as much as he can, the angle of his shoulder hurting as it presses into Hongbin's body but he doesn't care. He doesn't. Hongbin rocks Yoongi back and forth and Yoongi isn't sure who he's trying to reassure more with his whispered words. He closes his eyes and furrows his brow.

_God. Please. I'm so scared. Please, I need you now. We need you._

There is no answer.

 

 


	14. out in the open

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “This place is wretched,” Hoseok observes, sitting in Seokjin's truck while the witch watches the rearview mirror with badly veiled anxiety.

“This place is _wretched,_ ” Hoseok observes, sitting in Seokjin's truck while the witch watches the rearview mirror with badly veiled anxiety. Taehyung and Jimin are in the bed and the two of them are getting progressively more upset as they get closer to town. The four of them just wanted to check out what it was Seokjin had seen, but the moment they'd passed through the Gate it was like walking into a miasma of misery. Every movement they make takes more and more effort and it seems a struggle to breathe, to concentrate. By the time they reach the shadow of the trailer park Jimin is in a cold sweat, holding tightly to Taehyung and then to Hoseok, when he comes to the back of the truck. He is in a blind, animal panic.

“Hoseok,” he rasps, eyes wide and terrified as he shakes like a leaf. “Oh god, Hoseok. It can see me. It can see me. Please, please I need to hide please,” his voice is tiny and whimpering. Hoseok looks over to Taehyung, who shrugs helplessly and offers out a small vial of sky-blue liquid.

“What'll this do,” Hoseok asks.

“Calm him down,” Seokjin provides, coming around. “We can't have him panicking out here in the open with all these mundies around. Bad enough Taehyung came, but the four of us are going to draw more than enough attention to ourselves as it is.”

“C'mon, Jimin,” Hoseok urges, finally managing to encourage Jimin to swallow the contents of the vial. “There, there friend. Are you all right?”

“No,” Jimin replies, and his eyes are trained on the mountain, on the bald hilltop perhaps five miles away. “No, I hate this place.”

“I do too,” Taehyung assures, climbing out of the truck bed, boots scraping on the dirt. “But Seokjin said it's here, the thing. So we should at least look.” He's moving toward the driveway but Seokjin grabs him by the hand and yanks him back. “Wh—”

“There's plenty we can do from right here,” Seokjin murmurs. “I don't want to get too close to it without Namjoon and his backup. I charmed up the truck last night so it shouldn't...” he hesitates and looks at Jimin, who is shaking like a fern in the wind. “It _shouldn't_ be able to see us.”

Hoseok raises his hand and to it flies a mourning dove in soft grey feathers. He coos to her, and makes a motion with his free hand before he offers her to Jimin, who touches her head and breast with trembling fingers. He smiles at her and murmurs and she flies off. Taehyung watches the exchange with more than a little curiosity.

“She's going to look for us,” Jimin says, licking his dry lips. “She'll be a little safer with Hoseok's blessing.”

“Aah,” Taehyung says. “Because he's a conduit of God, right?”

“Conduit isn't the word I prefer,” Hoseok says. “But that's... Basically right, yes.”

“How do you even become a, a bearer of Gods power,” Taehyung asks, insatiably curious. “Like, did he _choose_ you, did it happen by accident?”

“Taehyung,” Seokjin chides.

“I didn't get to ask the other night,” Taehyung whines a little. “They fell asleep! N'you spent all day yesterday bein' all grown up n'shit.”

“I was chosen,” Hoseok says, holding Jimin to his chest and swaying their bodies while they wait for the bird to return, trying to warm Jimin's cold fear. “The Lord came to me in a dream. I went to the church the next morning and was blessed, I joined the priesthood as soon as I could. Was given the name _Brother Auriel._ ”

“That means _Brother Sunlight,_ ” Jimin laughs, light and breathless, somewhat hysterical. Hoseok gives him a gentle squeeze.

“I've been officially excommunicated, but God is still with me.”

“What happened?”

Hoseok licks his lips, tucks his cheek into Jimin's hair. “I'll tell you later. Once we're not out in the open anymore. I don't like it here. It feels... Rotten.”

Jimin is watching the fence when something hops weakly towards them. It's a rabbit. A skinny black rabbit with brown eyes. She is weak. She is skin and bones and Jimin tears himself away from Hoseok to go to her, to kneel and catch her in his hands when she falls. “Oh,” he whispers, and he doesn't realize until too late that he's stepped far enough away from the truck that he's out of range for the spells that are hiding them.

It comes up fast and Jimin doesn't have time to scream before it grabs him by the throat. It grabs and _squeezes,_ and Jimin drops the rabbit to the ground, clawing at the thing and gasping for air. Everything smells like death and decay, like underground crypts and bloated corpses, like dead and water-logged animals and the filth of old rites performed on black stone altars that even Jimin, in his knowledge that extends to the beginning of the Lords time, does not know.

Jimin can see it.

He can see it, writhing and furious, oily and putrid. It hates them. It doesn't want them here. It's leeched its way into the water and it has taken the boy with dark eyes and in taking him has claimed the other, the one in iron chains. They are its prisoners and its prison, they are all that stand between it and the world.

Jimin coughs, tastes blood. Everything is turning dark and his tongue sits fat on his bottom lip as he chokes, feels the blood rushing to his head in an attempt to oxygenate it.

Light.

Light beams like an explosion and he falls to the ground, heaving in air and scrambling backward to the truck. The rabbit has hopped close to the wheel well and Jimin drags her into his arms as Hoseok hauls him into the back of the already-moving truck and Taehyung yanks up the tailgate.

Hoseok is shining like a beacon, his pale eyes are flashing, his yellow hair moving like he's underwater until the glow recedes and he looks to Jimin, eyes glazed in fear. The mourning dove is nowhere to be seen and it strikes Jimin horribly, like a slap, that she is dead.

“Jimin,” Hoseok whispers, and Jimin looks up at him, trembling violently. “Jimin, oh, Jimin,” Hoseok bends to kiss him, deep and soft and reassuring on the mouth and Jimin hiccups, tries not to cry. That thing had been—oh, sweet Lord. Evil. There is no other word for it. He holds the rabbit, who pants in his arms. He looks down at her and she makes a soft noise, like the further away they get from the evil the more it pains her. It strikes Jimin that she must be connected to one of the prisoners; she looks ghostly, a little transparent at the end of her paws, at the tips of her ears.

“What's that,” Taehyung asks, finally speaking from where he sits, shamelessly curled close to the truck window. One hand is inside the truck holding Seokjin, the other is holding on to Jimin as though to make sure he can't float away as they speed up the south side of the mountain.

“I think,” Jimin licks his lips. Hoseok is moving behind him, and cradling up close to his body, He pulls them both closer to Taehyung so Seokjin can hear what's being said through the window. “I think she's a Guardian.”

“A Guardian?” Taehyung asks, blinking. “Like... With a capital G? Or a familiar.”

“She's not a familiar,” Jimin shakes his head. “She's... Connected, to something, she...” he watches in horror as she finally fades from his lap completely. They're too far from the person she Guards for her to be able to go with them. Whoever she Guards is trapped with that wicked thing.

“I hope Namjoon gets here soon,” Jimin whispers.

“I'm hoping his hunters have brought all the gear they can carry,” Hoseok replies, his gaze hard as he looks back, sharp eyes watching for shadows that shift too freely.

~

Back at the house, Seokjin's hands tremble as he uses a wand to perform extra protection charms. A cast of dim light about the house at all times, making the windows impossible to open from the outside, hanging herbs above the doors. Hoseok joins him after a moment, hesitates.

“May I?” he asks, holding his staff in one hand and Seokjin, clearly distressed and distracted, nods. He pauses in his own work and watches Hoseok, who braces his weight. Grounds his being on the earth and holds the staff in both hands. He feels God in his mind and does not prostrate himself but pleads for safety for the people of this home, of the town below. He understands that there is only so much God can do, now. They are close to a dark thing, something that has been poisoning the mountainside for a very long time, but through him washes the milk-gold light he has long since gained control over. He holds the staff horizontally and lets it breathe through his body.

A hundred thousand points of light create a net around the house and the property. Little crackles of white magic move like electricity through the trees and the light Seokjin put up glows brighter. Hoseok takes a few panting breaths and pulls the staff back toward himself, holding it, swallowing down the remaining power and feeling it thrum in his blood, just waiting to be released. Seokjin looks at him in gentle wonder.

“That was the power of your God?”

“Yes,” Hoseok says, putting the staff vertical, leaning into it. “Yes, He... He graces me with His presence.”

“That is truly awesome,” Seokjin says, and Hoseok smiles at him, weakly. It takes so much out of him but he doesn't dare risk any more harm coming to these people—the people down in the valley or Taehyung and Seokjin, whose hospitality has been great and whose magic has been nothing but a pleasure to experience.

“I took the liberty of,” he pants for air, his head aching. “Of extending it to the gate. Just... As a precaution. It's strange that we haven't heard from Namjoon. It's been two days.”

“I thought he would have been here by now,” Seokjin confesses, offering his arm to aid Hoseok back into the house. “But when I try to call his phone is off.”

“Something's wrong,” Hoseok says, letting Seokjin settle him into a chair, smiling when Jimin makes his way downstairs—showered and shivering, his messy hair towel-dried. “But I'm not sure there's much we can do about it now.”

“You two should concentrate on getting some rest,” Seokjin says, and Hoseok nods, reaching to hold Jimins hand. “I'll spell the upstairs rooms.” Seokjin is heading upstairs as Taehyung is coming down. They share a heated kiss, heavy with fear and passion and Hoseok looks away, respectfully. Jimin slides onto the couch beside him.

“Are you all right,” he asks, and Hoseok looks down at him.

“Are you?” he replies, and Jimin shakes his head. Aah, his friend is always honest. “Seokjin and I've put up a few more spells. Does it feel better here?”

“It's less oppressive,” Jimin admits. “I've sent a few down to check on the rabbit. A badger, a couple of woodhares. Two blackbirds. They'll bring back news soon, I hope.” Hoseok watches him chew his lip and knows that he is worried for his friends. Jimin commands the forest and all the things within, but he also feels that they are his responsibility, his family, and he hates sending them to do things that are unsafe, that could cause them harm or even death. The loss of the mourning dove has hurt him. She'd been so young and eager to help.

“Tell me what you made of the rabbit,” Hoseok asks, as Taehyung makes himself comfortable on the chair nearest them, hands making motions, turning on water, setting cocoa into mugs without his eyes watching. “You said it was a Guardian.”

“Yes,” Jimin repliess. “She's a Guardian, I'm almost sure of it. But by the time—she's so small. Most Guardians, by her age they're bigger than Namjoon's familiar. They're marked with paint, they're warriors or defenders, not... Not helpless little things. Certainly not humble enough to come to me for help.”

“But she did.”

“Because something is _wrong,_ ” Jimin replies, biting at his fingertips. “Like she's being suffocated, slowly. Do you remember that boy in Chicago? The one with the withered familiar.” Hoseok nods. “It's like that. Something is suppressing her charge. Has been, for a very long time. I don't think she realizes what she's supposed to be. Guardians are almost never such... Simple creatures.”

“That would make sense,” Taehyung mutters, waving the cocoa mugs over, each hovering in front of them so they can reach. “There was a huge spike of magic, two years ago. Something big happened, but Seokjin n'me, by the time we got there all there was was the rock, n'we got outta there as fast as we could.”

“You mean the rock on the hill,” Jimin says, and Taehyung nods, shrinking into his chair.

“It's evil,” he says. “It's a Gate, and it's evil. Seokjin said I... Totally lost it, when we went there. I can't really remember, wild magic n'all that, but he said it was like possession. He had to tie me up in the back of the truck to get me home n'I was speakin' tongues the whole way. We ain't been back since. Not too close, anyway.”

“A demonic force?” Jimin asks Hoseok, who shrugs.

“Could be. We didn't get close enough for me to be sure. But it's definitely evil, no doubt about that. The mundies call it the _Devils Headstone._ ”

For a long time they sit in silence. The glow of the lights outside is warm and comforting and there is no sound of the usual night forest—no ogres dragging their clubs, no direwolves, no three-tailed foxes. Just the night birds, owls and squeaking mice. Seokjin comes back downstairs and smiles, tenderly.

“Time for bed, you three,” he says, carefully lifting Taehyung, now mostly asleep, from his chair. “Come on, now. Upstairs.” He herds them like small children, mothering, and Hoseok can't help but enjoy it, a little. It's nice to be mother-henned. He hasn't seen his mother in some time now—she doesn't want to see him and that's all right. He's long since made peace with it, but there is something reassuring in Seokjin's little _goodnight_ , in the way he kisses each of their foreheads like a mark of protection before he makes his way down the hall to the room he shares with Taehyung and closes the door behind him.

In the bedroom they are sharing, Hoseok watches Jimin shed away his clothes until he is nude, gloriously tanned with his dark hair beaded and messy, his eyes soft brown. A wild Forest King, even bare of his rack of antlers, his spotted pelt. He watches Jimin sit on the bed and wait for him. He feels a heavy warmth in the pit of his belly when he steps closer and Jimin reaches out to touch his hand.

They dance around one another, the two of them. Have since they first met, when Hoseok felt a pull of attraction he'd never experienced before. Jimin was a primal thing, he was of earth and tree and water. He was untamable and yet Hoseok did not want to tame him. He would never dream of pinning him down and tying him to a life he could not live, did not want to live.

Instead they live their lives together in moments like this one, when they are together. Jimin is afraid, yes. Hoseok is afraid too. But in the safety of the bedroom Jimin's hands are steady as they undress him, his lips are soft when they kiss. His hair tickles Hoseoks neck as they fall together into the bed. They touch one another with confident hands, with slides of finger and tongue so familiar they are a comforting motion in and of themselves. Hoseok wraps his arms around Jimin's shoulders and Jimin holds him close with his great strength. The two of them are indistinguishable from one another, white and green turning to a soft, sweet mint color that fills the entire room.

When Jimin is inside of him, caging him in with his arms and his body, Hoseok feels a well of love overflow. He pants into Jimin's mouth, he whispers into his hair promises of affection. His fingers tangle in that hair, drag over that skin and they make love, pure and unsullied. It is messy and wet and obscene and it is perfect.

On his knees, with Jimin bent over his back Hoseok feels very small. With their fingers threaded together Hoseok kisses their knuckles and stretches like a cat to push closer. When Jimin finishes, he brings their hands to touch Hoseok and Hoseok drops to the bed in the wet smears of his own semen and sweat. Together in the dim glow of Gods light they gasp and kiss and hold on to one another because they are afraid but even in that fear there is confidence that as long as they are together, they'll be all right. They'll make it through the heavy net of oppression and wickedness. They will be victorious because there is nothing one of them can't do without the other at his back.

“I love you,” Hoseok whispers against Jimin's lips, tastes his sweat and saliva and skin. Jimin doesn't truly understand the way that humans love. He lost that ability when he took the crown of the Forest King, but he does understand this: he is bound to Hoseok. They are bound to one another, and he would not choose another for as long as he lives.

“I chose you,” he replies. “And in my next life, I will choose you also.”

“Will you find me, when this life is over,” Hoseok asks, and Jimin nods. “Even if I've lost all my light?”

“You will always be the sun to me,” Jimin promises, and Hoseok laugh-cries into his neck. The two of them sleep curled tightly around one another, clinging vines, small children seeking comfort. They find it. They hold on.

 


	15. safe in the trees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The house knows something is wrong.

The house knows something is wrong.

She can feel it in the glass, in her plastered walls and wooden beams. In her hardwood floors and the locked door to the basement, where no one ever goes. She feels it in the minds of the men who live inside of her, and she closes herself up a little tighter in the dark. Houses have magic of their own, you see. Inherent magic that only a dwelling can give. It's more than keeping out vampires or anything silly like that. It's knowing what to do, and when best to do it. She's added a third and fourth bedroom to the upstairs, because she knows there are more people coming. She knows there will be eight of them, safe in her walls. She's turned all the mirrors to paintings, because she knows evil things can look one way through mirrors and something has been prodding at her, something has been trying to peek inside for weeks now.

She won't let it. It won't get in. She's been where she is for nearly three hundred years, she is not going to let any harm come to her charges. It rattles her shutters to think that something out there thinks it has the right to climb into her walls and do harm to those who live inside of her.

Just _thinking_ about it makes her groan and creak in protest.

She's known about the bad thing for a longer than any of the humans inside of her have been alive. It was there when she was built, before she had proper roots to protect herself or her people. But now she is strong, and the assistance of the people inside of her make her stronger. Nothing will hurt them. Nothing, she will make sure of it.

Let the darkness slam against her grey wood walls. Let it drag over her grey metal roof, rake it's claws over the porch screens. Let it howl and scream like wolves in the night wind, she will not let it pass.

She knows they are sleeping. Her two boys are asleep in their bed, tucked in close. She tries to protect them from their nightmares but nightmares are insidious little things, and sometimes they slip through. Sometimes Pikachu catches and eats them. Sometimes she shares them with Namir.

Her two guests are also asleep in their room. They are calm and comfortable. One of them glows faintly, with a holy light she has not experienced for nearly two hundred years. She takes the opportunity to absorb it, to weave it into her walls to make herself stronger.

In the night, a herd of deer come to nibble at the wildflowers. They respect her, and do not attempt to steal from the garden. They do rub their antlers against the posts of the porch, offering of themselves and she gratefully accepts their assistance. They are worried about the boy inside, she knows. The boy who wears the antlers of the King.

But no harm will come to them. Her plaster walls are thick and blessed. Her stone fireplaces are safe and ever-burning. It's the summer, but it feels so cold. The thing is creeping closer and she braces herself for it's impact, because it will impact, but she will hold strong against it. It will not touch the men inside of her.

Three days pass and the four men come. They are exhausted, weary and one of them is a little bit broken. She takes them into her halls and when she realizes she turns two bedrooms into three. For two of them, the pain of sleeping in one bed will hurt, and she doesn't want them to hurt. They need to be strong to face the evil that's coming. They need to hold fast against the dark.

The wind shrieks over her roof that night. It knows the four are there. It scratches at her windows, all lined with salt. Nothing can get in. She rests, knowing that they are safe.

She will take care of them.

 


	16. the weave of a spell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taehyung and Seokjin move up from Boston in the summer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a look at taejin <3

Taehyung and Seokjin move up from Boston in the summer.

Well. _Move up_ is a bit of a misnomer. Seokjin runs away from his family's heritage home in Boston and drags Taehyung with him, is really more like what happened, but the two of them were precocious and easily agitated and Seokjin had thought—correctly—that leaving the city would be good for Taehyung's magic. He needed to be in a place where he could roam free and unhindered, where his magic could finally take a shape, a proper familiar. Goddess knew he wasn't getting that in Boston, where the city closed in on itself in winding backstreets meant more for horses than for cars, and cemeteries full of dead for him to talk to while other people were watching him. Especially not in the Roxbury Section 8 housing. No matter how much his parents loved him, the entire city was unsafe for him and, as he grew, it became unsafe for the people around him, too. Seokjin had asked them of course. To take Taehyung with him. They'd agreed a little reluctantly, though they knew it was best for him to get away from the crowd of bodies and noise that is Boston.

This is much better for the both of them, despite the oddly unlevel way the mountain itself _feels_. It takes less than two weeks out in the woods for Taehyung to wake with a three foot long sable weasel on his bed with it's head on his chest—sable _blue,_ it's fur crackling with lightning. She's a _raiju,_ he informs Seokjin with a sniff when Seokjin calls her an oversized ferret. He names her _Pikachu,_ and he loves her so much it's almost disgusting. But she is a wonderful familiar: the very embodiment of all that Taehyung is. Wild, untamed, affectionate, loyal and fierce. She often attempts play with Seokjin's familiar: an unusually large and regal Enfield he's named _Namir,_ who has a disappointing tendency to laze and merely look unimpressed when asked to assist with something he doesn't want to do. The two of them wrestle, snap teeth and tussle when Namir is feeling charitable, and the two of them sleep in the alcove near the large downstairs fireplace like puppies, all wings, fur and talons and happy little chuffing noises because they really _do_ like one another.

Together, happily, they live in the house in the woods. Taehyung writes to his parents often, though he prefers not to phone them. He gets emotional hearing their voices and doesn't want to lose his nerve and go back to the city just yet, he always says. He sends them beautiful letters, and receives many in return, along with polaroids of what's happening in their neighborhood.

Tonight, Namir and Pikachu are out hunting pixies. It's a task they take great enjoyment in and it leaves Taehyung and Seokjin alone, for a while. The two of them are curled in their separate beds in the upstairs rooms, but Seokjin can count down to the second when Taehyung is going to knock at his door. He is sixteen and doesn't like the dark, still. He's sensible enough to be afraid of what lurks in it, despite all the charms and spells on the house and property. He sometimes has terrible nightmares about horrid white things that eat flesh and wear the horns of dead moose, things with oily tentacles and a million unblinking eyes that make him wake up screaming.

But Seokjin smiles when Taehyung creeps into his bed. He offers his arm and Taehyung snuggles in tight to his chest, sighing. “Jin,” he asks, his eyes closed.

“Tae,” Seokjin replies.

“D'you think I'll ever be able to go back to Boston?”

“Do you want to?”

“...not really.”

“Then, no. If you don't really want to go, you'll never be able to go and stay there, Tae.”

Taehyung makes an affirmative little noise and settles in closer. Seokjin is _almost_ asleep.

“Jin?”

“Mm?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.” Seokjin kisses Taehyung's forehead and knows that the kind of love Taehyung means isn't the kind of love Seokjin is giving him—not yet. Taehyung isn't old enough yet, he doesn't really understand what he wants or is asking for. But when he does.

Oh, two years later, when he _does,_ he and Seokjin christen the greenhouse and the living room, the bathroom and the bed because they can't keep their hands off of one another, can't stop kissing, just keep falling in love with one another over and over and over. The love rolls off the house like a charm in and of itself, and that's when Seokjin decides to start crafting pendants.

He has a skill for it, the delicate handiwork with a crystal-topped wand. Taehyung will sit and watch with fascination. His own magic is nothing so... Sharp and precise, but his hands, his human hands, those are capable of sharp, precise movements. So instead of helping with the jewelry he makes the little business cards and hand-written notes for every order. His handwriting is unique, and his calligraphy is first-rate. He starts putting calligraphy prints up on their Etsy and together, out in the woods, the two of them live quietly with one another and their familiars, and all is well.

~

Seokjin knows there is something evil on the mountain. He can feel it in his bones like an ache, but it isn't until Namir limps onto the property, clearly attacked, that he sets up further precautions. Ever since the spike of magic last year, things have been getting worse. More creatures on the mountain to guard themselves from, more... Wickedness in the air. Nevermind what that horrible Gate had done to Taehyung last year. Taehyung whose spirit is open and bright and easily given to possession.

He'd turned into a monster, for a moment. A horrible, twisted version of himself that terrified Seokjin into a burst of magic that slammed Taehyung up against a tree, that bound him with rope and strapped him into the back of the truck so they could flee. Seokjin will never forget that sight. Taehyung's eyes, white and red, his lips curled back into a smiled so big it was unnatural, stretching almost to his ears. The clawed look of his big, bony hands. His too-fast movements, his long, red tongue.

Seokjin had screamed and it was a banshee scream, the power unleashed across the mountain and Taehyung had hit the oak tree and Seokjin's instincts told him to leave him there to rot but his heart could not do that, so he'd strapped him into the truck and brought him home and within ten minutes of being past the Gate to their safe place the evil had faded, leaving Taehyung dazed and unsure, staggering like he was punch-drunk until he fell into Seokjin's arms and shivered with fear until dawn.

Taehyung takes to wearing a pendant Seokjin fashioned for him, to protect him from spiritual possession, and Seokjin almost forgets the lurking terror just on the edge of his vision.

Then, the thing at the trailer park. The thing that saw his third eye from half a mile away and he feels in his gut the very primal and very human fear of the dark. Taehyung hangs faerie globes in the air, suspends them from strings and makes them glow. It's Seokjin waking up with nightmares, now. He's called Namjoon but it will take another two days for the priest and the shaman to arrive and he doesn't dare sleep. He's afraid he won't wake up.

“Jin,” Taehyung murmurs, sliding up behind him in the bed they now share. All around their room hang crystals and charms, bundles of herbs and strands of beads. “Jin, you gotta sleep.”

“No,” Seokjin shakes his head, trembling. Namir and Pikachu are at the end of the bed, standing watch, but he can't sleep. Doesn't dare. Taehyung kisses his neck and Seokjin wants to roll over and shove him off but he knows that's because he's afraid. Not of Taehyung, but of whatever is out there, waiting to get him. “Tae.”

“Let me help you sleep, hyung,” Taehyung whispers, kissing his neck, the soft skin of his ear. Seokjin makes a desperate little sound and lets Taehyung lay him on his back. Lets Taehyung make love to him in quiet motions with wet kisses and strong hands. It's not often that Taehyung is the one protecting him. Seokjin can feel him weaving the spell with his thoughts but says nothing, just holds onto him and moans gently into his ear. Taehyung is so broad, now. So tall and strong. He's grown into himself and Seokjin loves him.

Taehyung stays where he is, when he finishes. He stays on top of Seokjin with his older lover's body rolled up, thighs pressed wide open. He pulls the blankets up over their bodies and relaxes so that their chests are pressed together and they're both less stiff and he falls asleep that way, his head on Seokjin's collarbones, his hands tucked under Seokjin's broad shoulders. The net of his spell sparkles on Seokjin's skin, almost tickling. It is a spell of safety, it is a spell of love and protection, Taehyung's very special type of magic. Wild, fierce and untamable. It's a little frayed at the edges but the weave itself is strong, and Seokjin lets it settle into him like snow falling through trees: soft, quiet, and pulled ever downward by the forces acting upon it.

“I love you,” Seokjin whispers, his lips in Taehyung's hair, and the spell gives a squeeze, because Taehyung is asleep, but magic never rests. He tries to sleep. He closes his eyes and is grateful when he does not dream. When he wakes, Taehyung is laying beside him and Namir is up on the bed, tucked close to Seokjin with his chin resting on Seokjin's shoulder. He gives his familiar a grateful pet on the back, and Namir grumbles good-naturedly, licking Seokjin's chin.

It's hard to be afraid when one is so surrounded by love and safety. Seokjin hopes he can bring that aura with him, when they finally face whatever rests on the north side of the mountain. He hopes he can be brave.

 


	17. the cost of power

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Namjoon and Wonsik arrive at the motel an hour before sundown to find Sanghyuk at his car, the personification of a winter storm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> disclaimer: while i have done considerable amounts of research on voodoo for other novel projects, i'm bending it here to suit my needs for the story. basically, everything i've made up is bullshit, so don't to... idk taking it seriously or anything

Namjoon and Wonsik arrive at the motel an hour before sundown to find Sanghyuk at his car, the personification of a winter storm. He is checking the weapons and supplies with movements like snapping tree branches and when Namjoon asks where Jeongguk is, Sanghyuk jerks his head toward the motel room. “But I wouldn't go in there,” he says, almost as a bitter afterthought. “He's in communion.”

Namjoon licks his lips. In communion. Jeongguk is engaged with a Loa, performing rites in preparation for what is to come. “With who,” he asks, and Sanghyuk shakes his head.

“Dunno,” he says, slamming the cartridges of rock salt and blessed silver back into the shotgun. “Didn't ask. It came last night, but he asked it to wait.”

“That's dangerous,” Namjoon says, and he regrets it immediately because Sanghyuk slams the trunk of the car so hard the entire vehicle moves under the force of his strength. He reminds himself that this boy became a hunter after killing a jersey devil at the tender age of fourteen with nothing but an oak stick and his bare hands. He kills much more efficiently with age and the proper tools, but when worse comes to worse sometimes it's still just Sanghyuk armed with a big oak stick and Namjoon will always bet on Sanghyuk, technically a mundie or not.

“I'm gonna go kill something,” Sanghyuk snarls, and neither Namjoon nor Wonsik moves to stop him. They stand there in silence for a long time.

“He's getting worse,” Wonsik says, the observation gentle as can be.

“It's because Jeongguk is getting worse,” Namjoon replies. “They're only as stable as one another, that's the agreement.” They'd made it by accident, Namjoon knows. They hadn't really intended to tie themselves to one another, but they'd had sex at just the right moment, in the right place, and the powers that be saw fit to make sure that they would stay together, who knew why.

Namjoon's familiar rubs insistently against his leg before she pads off into the woods after Sanghyuk and, after a moment, Wonsik's bobcat follows.

“Come back soon, Nyra,” Namjoon says. She looks back at him, witheringly, and starts off again. The bobcat—Frost—snorts and trots off after her. “God. Sometimes I think she hates me.”

“She doesn't hate you, don't be ridiculous,” Wonsik assures, settling down into the seat of Namjoon's truck. “Come on, lets go find something to eat. Maybe by the time we get back, Jeongguk'll be done.”

~

He is done, by the time they get back. He's sitting on the steps leading up to the motel room door and smoking a cigarillo that smells like cherries and ancient mixes of tobacco. He looks so old but so young, Namjoon thinks. So fucking young. He thinks of _Little Jonny South,_ who had been at the tradepost when he was fifteen, already a houngan of incredible power. Who had become Sanghyuks partner at seventeen. He's not yet twenty, he's still a child.

“Hey,” he says, pulling his cigarillo from his mouth, the smoke rolling out from behind his teeth like it's coming from somewhere deep inside him. “You made it.”

“Yeah,” Namjoon says, uneasy. He's not sure if he's actually speaking to Jeongguk, or if he's speaking to someone else. “Who's in?” he asks.

“S'just me,” Jeongguk replies, leaning back onto one hand. He's covered in bite marks, hickies and bruises all up his throat and chest. Namjoon can see them beneath his open shirt. “Erzulie wasn't happy with the room, but I guess she decided it was good enough.”

 _Aah,_ Namjoon thinks. _A blessing, then._ He knows that sometimes Jeongguk trades bits of himself for power or for protection. He also knows that he gives of himself for blessings and even Namjoon, who knows very little about Voodoo, knows Erzulie Freda. The pale woman with long hair, of help and goodwill and fortune and a good many other things. “I see.”

“Did you know she cries, when it's over,” Jeongguk asks, his voice very small as he stares off into the trees. “She always cries when it's over. S'too much for her, this place. The world.” He is blinking back tears and Namjoon isn't sure if he should step forward or leave him alone. “She carries such a burden.”

Jeongguk presses his hand over his heart like it hurts. Namjoon has seen the tattoo there, Erzulie's sigil. It had taken days to complete because the magic had to be woven just-so, and Jeongguk had been sixteen when he did it. The elderly houngan who did it for him had quietly told Namjoon that the loa had found him, mounted him immediately. She'd claimed him before any of the others could, and she would always have first right to him; _better miss freda than a baron, my friend_.

“Sanghyuk went out to find something,” Namjoon says, attempting to draw Jeongguk back in from his contemplations. “Have you eaten?”

“Yeah,” Jeongguk gets up, stretches his arms over his head. His t-shirt rises, and Namjoon sees the bites there, too. Bruises like her fingerprints, like the coils of snakes. She'd been insistent this time, apparently, but Jeongguk is watching the darkened treeline. Sanghyuk walks through it, holding a bloodied staff but nothing else. Jeongguk looks at him.

“You guys better get a room,” Sanghyuk says. “We ain't goin' nowhere tonight. I ain't drivin' up there,” he points an accusatory finger towards the mountains, as though the landscape itself is working against him, “In the dark.” He stalks past Jeongguk and into the room, slamming their shoulders together very purposefully. Jeongguk closes his eyes.

“We can go n'the mornin,” he says, licking his lips. “I'll make sure we're up.”

Namjoon watches with pity as Jeongguk drops the last ashes of his cigarillo and follows Sanghyuk into the motel room. He hears the door lock behind them.

~

Jeongguk lets Sanghyuk slam him back against the door. He's known this was coming, even the night before when Erzulie had looked up at him from the water in the bath and he'd begged her to wait until Sanghyuk could safely leave. Sanghyuk disappeared the next morning, furious and resigned and Jeongguk had let Erzulie into himself: had let her bathe, had oiled her skin, braided her hair and let her climb on top of him as is her right. He is hers. She claimed him first, though she hadn't made his first deal, and as she kissed his neck and pulled his soul to pieces Jeongguk knew he was bound to love her.

But he is bound to Sanghyuk also, and the two of them aren't fond of one another. She fights to _clean that nasty boys filth off you_ and he pins Jeongguk down to mark him as his partner, his, his alone. Even now Sanghyuk's mouth covers her marks and makes them darker, more cruel. Jeongguk can't blame him. He cares very much for Sanghyuk. Loves him. But in moments like this when he is untamed, his strength unchecked and cruel, he is also afraid. It's no different than being with Erzulie Freda.

“Hyuk,” he pants, when Sanghyuk's teeth dig in too hard. “Hyuk it hurts, stop biting so hard,” and Sanghyuk's mouth gentles, but does not stop entirely. The difference between Sanghyuk and Erzulie is this: Sanghyuk will do as he asks. Erzulie expects him to do as she commands. She is a good loa, but still a loa, and she has expectations. Her gifts have costs.

Sanghyuks do not.

Sanghyuk rips away Jeongguks clothes. He tosses them to the floor and pushes him back to the unmade hotel bed, climbing on top of him, pinning his wrists down. Jeongguk doesn't fight his grip, doesn't want to. “You don't have to hold on so tight,” he whispers, shivering. “M'not gonna disappear, Hyuk.”

“No,” Sanghyuk admits. “But they might take you.” Sanghyuks fear of the loa is understandable. Jeongguk grew up with them, knows them intimately, knows the power they have over him. But he'd chosen to take that. He'd offered his hand out to the Baron when he was ten and powerless and alone and never looked back. He's the youngest houngan north of the Mason-Dixon line—probably north of the equator—and he is one of the most powerful priests in an age.

But he's also a small and helpless mortal who is desperately, painfully in love with his partner. A partner who, to his eyes, sees him as a precious prize to be kept and protected but not as someone or even some _thing_ to love, not the way Jeongguk wants to be loved.

It's better than nothing. It's better than nothing at all and Jeongguk lets himself be laid back and held down. Lets Sanghyuk prepare him with his big fingers and when he whimpers for him to be gentler, Sanghyuk gentles. He kisses Jeongguk's thighs in regret, kisses him deeply with apologies on his lips. He pushes inside of him so slowly, his body settling on top of Jeongguks, between his open legs. Jeongguk always cries, a little. Sometimes he thinks it's Erzulie's influence and sometimes he thinks it's just the pain of knowing he's in love with Sanghyuk and there's nothing he can do about it. It's knowing that the dark is always watching and waiting for the moment when Jeongguk's attention wavers, when his love loses focus just enough for it to reach through and snatch Sanghyuk away from him.

“Hyuk,” he whispers, when Sanghyuk presses in close, one arm bracing Jeongguk's head, the other resting over his heart. “Sanghyuk.”

“I gotcha, Jonny,” Sanghyuk replies, their breath brushing over lips and tongues as they kiss and speak, kiss and moan. “I gotcha, s'okay, I gotcha. Ain't gonna le'go.”

“Please,” Jeongguk whimpers and feels himself starting to tear up. Feels so full of love he might burst. It's a miserable feeling, knowing that Sanghyuk doesn't love him. Not the way he wants. Knowing that someday Sanghyuk will be taken away by force, by death or by hatred or even worse, the love of someone else and Jeongguk will never again get to touch him like this, will never know the press of his nose against his cheek or the soft hair on his belly and chest. He sobs, the sound wretched, and Sanghyuk kisses him so tenderly to silence his tears.

When it's finished. When their wild thrusts have stilled and Jeongguk is so full and his belly is splattered with cooling semen, Sanghyuk rolls onto his back and for a moment Jeongguk has a vision of himself as Erzulie Freda, riding the lap of a lover she knows will never be hers. He knows why she cries. He wonders if Sanghyuk can see the length of her hair, the curve of her breasts and hips and the emptiness of her belly. Maybe Sanghyuk would want him, if he was a woman. Maybe Sanghyuk would _love him._

Jeongguk weeps. He cries until there are no more tears, no more energy to give, and he sleeps.

And Sanghyuk... He wraps his arms around Jeongguk's exhausted body and hates himself and wishes, more than anything, that he could love little Jonny South the way he deserves to be loved. Wishes his heart pounded with more than jealousy and possessiveness when he knows that Jeongguk is beneath Erzulie Freda or another loa. Wishes he felt the warm glow of romantic love in his chest when he knows he's not capable of feeling it at all, not since he was fourteen and made a stupid, accidental wish at a crossroads. A stupid, accidental wish because he was young and heartbroken. A deal that a jersey devil tried to take advantage of. It wasn't supposed to come true. It wasn't supposed to happen. He'd been too young then. He'd made a mistake and now he's paying for it. _Jeongguk_ is paying for it.

“M'sorry, Jonny,” he whispers, biting back his own strangling sadness in the silence of the motel room. “M'sorry.”

 


	18. hold your breath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sanghyuk just listens for the command to drive. Jeongguk holds his breath.
> 
> Namjoon can _feel_ the barrier break under the incredible force of Wonsik's strength of will.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> two chapters today aren't you lucky~~~  
> look how productive i am with no internet kekeke

They agree to go in Sanghyuks car. All the weaponry is stored there. Wonsik sits in the front seat with his hands held up in front of him, a pair of reinforced bracers wrapped around his wrists with a loop over each middle finger. Settled over both palms are pieces of contoured leather where two large crystals sit, bright and clear. Wonsik keeps tightening them, retightening them, making sure the fit is strong. Jeongguk and Sanghyuk had said the wall was intensely strong—he doesn't want to break his wrists when they hit it.

They reach the sign for _Wakenly_ and they slow as they approach it. The road is empty of traffic—Namjoon is sure a spell has been placed on it to deter visitors—so the car crawls along at five miles an hour as Wonsik's forehead shines with sweat. He bares his teeth and starts to shake, hands in front of him, palms out like he's pressing against a great stone. His breathing is hard and he grunts like he's trying to push off a weight settled directly on his chest. Like it's a witch trial, and they're stacking the stones.

When Wonsiks breath starts to come short Namjoon rests his hands on his shoulders from where he sits in the seat behind, closes his eyes and concentrates on offering Wonsik what strength he can to help him. Sanghyuk just listens for the command to drive. Jeongguk holds his breath.

Namjoon can _feel_ the barrier break under the incredible force of Wonsik's strength of will. Even Sanghyuk can feel it, and he slams on the gas to get them through before it can close again. He doesn't lay off until they're well ahead of it, inside it's walls, and Wonsik slams back into the seat, gasping for air, bleeding from the nose and mouth. “Holy shit,” Sanghyuk hisses. “Holy shit, holy shit are you okay, what the _fuck_ was that?”

“Fine, m'fine,” Wonsik rubs his sleeve over his face, coughs. Namjoon is still holding on to his shoulders, holding on in concern. Whatever had wanted to keep them out had been prepared to fight Wonsik, very powerful witch in his own right—his throat was bruised like he'd been choking, and Namjoon was sure that he would find bruising all over his ribs and hipbones where he'd been shoving, nearly physically, against the force.

“That was. Holy fuck,” Wonsik looks down at his gloves, swallows hard. He lifts them to show Namjoon, who hisses. All four crystals are clouded with glimmering black and red. They are all cracked with the force of the magic Wonsik had just muscled through and before his eyes they crumble in his palms.

“C'mon,” Namjoon touches Sanghyuk's shoulder, passes to him the information he needs to get to Seokjin's home. He tries not to lead them past the Devils Headstone. He's afraid of what might happen to Wonsik and Jeongguk if they get too close.

As it is, Jeongguk shivers and shudders, whimpering quietly, and Wonsik's heart audibly pounds so hard and so fast that for a moment Namjoon is afraid he's having a heart attack. Everything is tense and terrible until they pass through the second Gate. Only then does Jeongguk relax, only then does Wonsik slump into the seat and cover his face with one hand, near trembling in relief. When the car pulls up to the house with it's weathered grey wood, the bright nets of magic laid over the place bring much comfort and the feeling of undeniable safety. They climb out of the car and Namjoon is relieved to see Seokjin running out to greet them. He catches his older friends hug and feels something in him turn cold when Seokjin whispers _thank the goddess you're here, thank the goddess, namjoon, it's so much worse than I thought._

“Yeah,” Namjoon nods, holding on to Seokjin for longer than he should. “Yeah I know, it—”

“Woah!” Namjoon hears Taehyung shout in alarm and turns away from the comfort of his older friends grip to see that Wonsik has collapsed against the car, slid down the door to the ground, still bleeding, movements slow. Taehyung has already reached him and is pulling the bracers off his wrists, pushing back his silver hair while his bobcat paces and does nothing but watch, because it's all he can do.

Wonsik tries to bat away his attention, wiping under his nose with the white sleeves of his shirt but the blood just keeps dripping. He presses one hand to his ribs and groans, slamming his head back into the metal of the car door and breathing in short, hard pants through his mouth. Namjoon walks towards him and, as gently as he can, hauls him to his feet while Taehyung looks on in horror.

“Nams,” Wonsik pants. “Fuck. _Fuck,_ I think it broke my ribs,”

“Why the hell didn't you _say something,_ ” Namjoon snarls into his ear. Sometimes his partner is an _idiot._ A complete idiot. Worse than his lover who is, in addition to being an idiot, an _airhead._ “Jesus, Wonsik, I'm not psychic!”

“You sure?” Wonsik smiles weakly and lets Namjoon lead him toward the house, where two other men stand on the porch. “Hey, Hoseok.”

“What have you done now,” Hoseok says, though his voice and smile are brittle. Namjoon focuses on leading Wonsik inside and laying him down on the couch. Not the bench by the kitchen, but the couch, which sits near the fireplace. Seokjin is hot on their heels, already waving ingredients into motion. Magic is good for most things, but sometimes a good potion or salve is what a person really needs and as Namjoon rips open Wonsik's shirt he feels his face go pale.

The bruising is hideous. Dark and ugly all over his chest and shoulders, at the peaks of his hips. Wonsik's breath is rattling and Seokjin moves to sit, cradling his head on his thighs while Taehyung plucks the ingredients out of the air to start working on the potion Seokjin means to make. Seokjin smooths back Wonsik's hair and Namjoon kneels beside the couch while Seokjin asks about Wonsik's lover, a mundane named Jaehwan. It's an attempt to keep Wonsik conscious when it's clear he's on the verge of passing out, and it works. Wonsik breathes out anecdotes about Jaehwan between hisses and whimpers, trembles violently while Taehyung slides the warm salve over his skin and Seokjin heals his broken ribs very, very slowly.

“I ma, made him a jacket,” Wonsik is panting slurring with the effort of staying awake. “Fr... From the leather of a, a duskland bull. He... He wanted a new coat, y'know, n'I... I w, wanted t'get 'im somethin' special.”

“Did you hunt it yourself? That's impressive, Wonsik,” Seokjin says, his eyes bright with worry.

“Frost helped,” Wonsik replies. The bobcat is sitting at his legs, one great paw up on his thigh. He is purring, the sound deep and rumbling like thunder and after a moment he bullies Namjoon away to take his proper place at Wonsik's side, resting his chin in the curve of Wonsik's underarm as Wonsik's hand comes up to stroke his furry ears and head. “M'okay buddy,” he promises, weakly. “Seokjin's fixin' me up, promise. Don't tell Jaehwan.”

Frost pushes his ears back and offers Wonsik a gaze that could curdle milk. Namjoon can't help but laugh. “Like he isn't gonna find out anyway,” he says, and Wonsik laughs. “You keep saying he's a mundie but I think he's got you fooled.”

“Maybe,” Wonsik says, suddenly sounding very tired. Seokjin eases his hands away, and looks at Namjoon.

“Lets get him upstairs. The house made rooms for you all yesterday.”

It's a slow process, but they get Wonsik upstairs. Namjoon lays him down and Wonsik groans as Frost jumps up onto the bed and makes himself comfortable _directly_ on top of his body. “What the hell're you doin, you fat asshole,” Wonsik grumps, without any real venom. Frost just purrs and purrs and Wonsik strokes his head until he's asleep, his hand dropping to the bed. Namjoon leaves them alone, finds Nyra waiting for him in the hallway. She is black and green-washed and beautiful, and he gets down onto his knees to wrap his arms around her neck. She purrs, too, and drapes one foreleg over his shoulder. Her great paw is a comforting weight on his back and he buries his face in her fur, taking in a shuddering breath.

He's grateful for her in moments like this one. He needs her. He's afraid, and he needs her.

~

It isn't until later, when he's alone and the rest of the house is asleep, that Namjoon sits on the porch. The house is bathed in light and he's not worried for his own safety as he sits outside and watches Pikachu and Namir play with Nyra, who is larger than both of them and of good temperament. They chase one another and engage in a series of good-natured scuffles across the pine-needle littered yard. He waits a long time before he reaches for his phone and dials a number.

Jackson isn't a mundie, but he's damned close. The only magic he can work is domestic, which is embarrassing for him so he goes out of his way to hide it, but Namjoon doesn't care. He adores him regardless, his bright spirit, his warmth and easy affection. His tolerance of Namjoon's uncontrolled anxiety, even when it means he calls at all hours when he's not home. It takes a few rings for Jackson to pick up, and Namjoon realizes it's two thirty in the morning a little too late.

 _Mmbabe?_ Jackson slurs, the sound of a mattress moving making it clear that he's been asleep in their bed. _babe, w'sswrong?_

“Nothing,” Namjoon lies, and Jackson lets out a tired laugh. Namjoon can just see it—he's curling up on his side, holding a pillow to his chest and making that patient, expectant face he always makes when he knows Namjoon is lying and he's waiting for him to tell the truth. If he scrys hard enough he can picture the expression in perfect clarity: Jackson is exhausted but worried. His eyes are dark and his brow is furrowed but he's waiting to be told why Namjoon is calling, because he never calls without reason.

“...It's just. This place, it. Jia Er,” he feels his breath coming fast and terrified. He hadn't realized how scared he was. He's lapsed into Mandarin without meaning to, panting, clenching his teeth and holding himself while he rocks back and forth. “It's so bad, Jia Er, it's so fuckin' bad, it—it's like suffocating, I can't,”

 _Hold on,_ Jackson whispers, and Namjoon tries to remember how to breathe. _Hold on, Joon. Keep breathing. Where's Nyra?_

“Out here,” Namjoon whispers. “With Namir n'Chu.”

_Do you need to call her over?_

“No,” Namjoon shakes his head, hugs himself a little tighter. “Just. Just wanted to hear you. S'so bad. Seokjin said it was bad but Jia Er it's _so bad._ It tried to kill Wonsik when he pushed through the barrier. Seokjin said it bruised his heart.”

_It?_

“Whatever the fuck's out here trying to make sure it's plans don't get disturbed,” Namjoon replies. “It's like this huge... huge _mass,_ like a storm but it's on the ground instead of in the air... Seokjin's place is safe,” he hurries to reassure him. “There's so much magic here I don't think anything could break through. But we gotta go find whatever it is, Jia Er, and I'm scared.”

 _That's okay, Joon,_ Jackson reassures in his warm, low voice. _You can be scared, that's okay. Your friends are there to back you up, okay? You got Seokjin n'Wonsik, and everyone else. You'll be okay._

“Right,” Namjoon swallows. Just hearing Jackson say it makes his heart slow down.

_You'll be okay, Joon. N'you'll come home and stay in bed with me for a few days and it'll be okay. Just keep thinking about that, huh? I'm at home, waiting for you._

“Okay,” Namjoon whispers, and he focuses on sending his affection to Jackson, using the phone connection as a medium to press the ghost of a kiss to his cheek.

_Aah, that's so nice, Joon. I love you, too. Now go get some sleep, okay? I'll be here if you need me._

“Okay,” Namjoon nods and hangs up. He heads back inside and upstairs, the little globe of faerie light that followed him outside guides him back to the bedroom. Wonsik is still asleep with Frost on top of him and Namjoon wiggles into the bed beside him like a child looking for comfort, closes his eyes. It'll be okay. It'll be okay.

It has to be. He has to get home to Jackson. It has to be okay.

 


	19. force

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hongbin watches Yoongi sleep for a very long time. Forever, it feels like. Days or weeks or ten thousand years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this has a warning for gory imagery.

Hongbin watches Yoongi sleep for a very long time. Forever, it feels like. Days or weeks or ten thousand years. He looks paper-thin and weak and Hongbin hates it. He'd managed to get him to suckle at a gatorade bottle for a few minutes, but then he passed into the uneasy sleep he's been existing in for the past few months. Six months? More?

Hongbin feels something ugly in him writhe with the want to _fuck_ Yoongi, just then. To pin down his helpless, unconscious body and fuck him until he wakes up screaming. Disgusted, terrified, Hongbin pushes off the bed, grabs his camera, and leaves his lover to sleep.

Things haven't really been good between them in a long time. Hongbin can feel that something is terribly wrong, like their relationship isn't focused how it used to be. Ever since that day at the birch trees a little more than a year ago, ever since Yoongi had disappeared in the middle of the night only to come back smelling like stone and sweat, things have been... Off.

Sometimes, Hongbin is afraid of himself.

There are long stretches of his memory filled with nothing but the sensation of movement. There are horrible dreams of pits full of bodies in various states of fetid rot, of misshapen demons with bulbous eyes and flabby lips and the teeth of monstrous baboons but the distinct voices of humans. There are dreams of wretched revelry, worship, black stone altars and blood, oh god, the blood. But somehow he can't... The visions are indistinct and broken, like they're happening out of time and out of order, but they feel like memory. Even his own wild imagination could not conjure up such horrid things.

Very suddenly, Hongbin is out in the woods with no idea of how he got there. He is holding his camera and focusing the lens on a huge barred owl. It stares at him with a human face, the mouth opening into a triangulate grin too wide, full of slithering tongues as he snaps the picture and then lowers the camera to his chest. The owl looks like nothing but an owl now, and it's call echoes as it beats its wings and glides away singing, _who-hunts-for-you, who-hunts-for-you?_

He stares after it and swallows hard, turning to look at the creek and jumps to see Mamie Madison standing there, stooped and leatherbrown in her flower-patterned sundress, smiling sadly. “Miss Madison?” he asks, and she nods in silence. “Wh... What're you doin' here?”

She only offers him a soft expression and waves him over. Without any hesitation Hongbin goes to her like he always has, and he shivers at the distinct sensation of stepping out of somewhere cold and wet into someplace warm and dry. Mamie Madison's strong and bony hand clutches one of his, and the other pushes back his hair. She looks mournfully at his forehead, runs her fingers over it.

Hongbin feels ridges and swells in his skin where there should be none and in alarm he pushes his hand against his forehead and feels nothing out of the ordinary. But when she touches him again he's sure he can feel it, like someone tracing a feather over his eyelid.

 _I'm sorry, Bean,_ she says, cupping his face with one hand just like she used to. They're at her house in the swamp now, looking out over her incredible garden. _I'm sure they thought they was doin' right by you by lockin' it up. But ain't nothin' good comes from closin' up doors that's meant to be open._

“What?” he asks, and he looks to the garden where he can see corpses crawling out of the dirt, rotted and falling apart, held together only by the roots of the flowers, of monstrous waves of kudzu which have always irrationally terrified him, ever since he was a child. He'd seen it swallow a house over the course of a summer. He wonders if it's swallowed Mamie's house by now. He wonders if the bodies in the ground are why her garden is so beautiful.

 _You're such a good boy, Bean,_ she says with such great kindness and love that Hongbin's eyes start to water and it strikes him just how much he misses her—her firm hands, her bony lap, the curve of her shoulder where he'd first rested his head when he was five and wandered off his family's property in search of butterflies and found an old woman who loved him like a son until the day she died. He wandered through the swamps and the water, he's wandered through the trees under her watchful eyes. He's always been prone to roaming. He wonders where he's been going lately. He wonders if Yoongi is okay.

 _Tell me about him, Bean,_ Mamie says, as she nods for him to sit in the rocking chair beside her own. Something is clawing at the back of Hongbin's mind but he sits down and looks down at himself, smiles to see that he is bare-footed and wearing dirty overalls and a baby blue t-shirt. _About your bright little beau._

“Yoongi?” he asks, feeling himself blush. “He, he ain't my beau Miss Madison.” Not because Hongbin doesn't want him to be. Not because Hongbin doesn't _want_ him to be but because he's terrified of saying that he loves him—if he said he loves him, he's giving Yoongi the power to break his heart, and Hongbin isn't ready to give that away to anyone. Might never be ready.

 _Tell me 'bout 'im anyway,_ she smiles that tricky old woman smile, the one that always makes him laugh. _I wanna know, Bean, 'bout the boy's gonna steal my son away._

It warms Hongbin all the way through to be called her son, and the horrible scratching in his mind fades a little. “He, uh... He's real beautiful, Miss Madison. Real beautiful. He's so pale n'es got dark brown eyes—looks like the swamp water in the summer, yeah, when it gets all dark in the cypress. He got a voice like a trucker but he talks so sweet, Miss Madison. Says he loves me all the time.”

 _Do you believe him?_ she asks, looking over at him with simple curiosity. Hongbin licks his lips and searches himself for an answer. Does he believe Yoongi? He knows part of him wants to believe. He knows another part thinks _Yoongi_ believes it. But does he? Really?

“Yes Miss Madison,” he says, holding his camera in his hands as he smiles out at the corpses writhing under the flowers. They don't look like they're in pain, more like they're rolling about laughing and happiness. The flowers are bursting into full bloom. “Yes, I do.”

 _Then you gotta do me a favor, Bean,_ she says. _You gotta do somethin' for me._ He blinks over at her and she continues. _You gotta make sure those bracelets stay on his wrists, you hear me? Some things isn't meant to be let out, Bean. Some things is meant to stay hidden. He don't mean to, but somethin' ugly's gonna bust outta him the second it gets the chance, Bean. You gotta protect yourself. An' him._

“What do you mean,” he asks, blinking in confusion. He thinks about how weak Yoongi's been. He thinks about the way pieces of his memory have been disappearing. “Yoongi ain't gonna hurt me.”

 _No,_ she shakes her head and she looks so old, so sad. _No, Bean, but if you take them bracelets off, you're gonna hurt him._

“Miss Madison?”

The scratching is back. It's furious and maddening and Hongbin drops his camera into his lap, bares his teeth and rakes his nails over his head, panting, screaming, watching in abject horror as the kuzdu that creeps in through the back windows of the house shoots out through the glass of the porch door. Mamie Madison is gone and Hongbin is alone on the rotted wood of her house. The garden is still in bloom but everything is wrong, over-saturated and too bright. He hears the bellow of an alligator and that horrible recurrent nightmare slides over him like a block of ice.

Suddenly he is running. He is running, panting, crying through the water and the moss and the close-together pine trees at the edge of the swamp. Behind him it follows, that big albino gator with rot-brown teeth. Hongbin is seven again and he's so terrified, sobbing, hurting his hands on treebark and tangled roots when he falls.

He falls.

He falls half-in the water and before he can move it's on him, snapping it's huge jaws just beside his ear. Hongbin freezes in panic and the hellish creature works it's teeth under the straps of his overalls. With Hongbin kicking and screaming it drags him into the water and pulls him along like he's nothing more than a rat, or maybe a baby alligator. It carries him to an island in the swamp, forcing him under occasionally when a light beams down on the water like it's searching for something.

When it drags him up onto the island Hongbin coughs and splutters and throws up swamp water that tastes like graveyard dirt. He rubs at his eyes and forehead and gets a very distinct feeling of deja vu. Only when he opens his eyes it's not the two men from his recurrent dream but a monster. A swelled mass of tentacles and eyes, a thousand mouths and ten thousand young, black goats with pale eyes with human pupils and horns that burn with emerald green flames. Hongbin stares, unable to blink, and the thing drags him closer, wraps tentacles around his throat and squeezes, threateningly.

 _Not long now,_ it hisses in a voice like cold slime sliding down Hongbin's neck. _Not long at all, boy. You're doing very well._ Hongbin can't talk, but there's a very distinct taste of blood in his mouth, the strange sensation of... Chewing on fur? Feathers?

 _Soon,_ the thing oozes, all of it's mouths grinning, showing sharp teeth. _Soon I'll let you eat that boy. Once the doors are broken I'll let you fuck him dead and eat his corpse. Your pretty little sweet. Tear his throat right out, boy, suck down his life and chew on his bones, make a coat of his pretty white skin._

 _No,_ Hongbin can't breathe. It squeezes tighter.

 _Oh yes,_ it is still grinning as it slams Hongbin into a tree, then into the ground. Hongbin claws at it, feels it sliding under his clothes, touching him, pushing inside of him through every possible orifice, wiggling, squirming as though it's trying to fit itself into his skin. He wants to start screaming, but he can't find the air. He's slipping away, everything is cold and still and he lays there, unable to move beneath the weight of the evil trying to force itself into his form like he's a suit to be worn.

 _No,_ Hongbin is weeping, his mouth as far open as it will go, the creature reaching down so far it's in his stomach, the creature pushing in so deep it's in his intestines, rippling his skin. _No, no, no Yoongi. Yoongi Yoongi please—_

Hongbin wakes with a scream that's cut off by violent coughing. He wrenches himself onto his knees and vomits for what feels like hours, huge heaves of something too thick to be bile, but approximately the same putrescent yellow and having the same terrible sour taste. There are chunks of slimy debris and the sensation of them slipping down his lips and chin is enough to make him throw up again and again until he's so sure there can't possibly be anything left in his hollow body.

He shakes, drags himself to a tree and looks up at the canopy, seeing the black sky and twinkling stars. He's covered in sick, his lips trembling and shiny with saliva that drips down his chin as he starts to cry. Huge, gulping sobs as he pushes himself close to the tree and tries not to look at the skinned and maimed corpses of animals strewn about his body.

A badger, two woodhares, two blackbirds. His mouth tastes like blood and fur and feathers.

 _help,_ he thinks, ripping at his own hair. _god please, someone help me._

 


	20. the maw

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I thought maybe it was a rogue,” Wonsik says. Taehyung is shivering, coming up to hug Seokjin in fear. “Not that it had a fucking Maw behind it, not that it had power over the fucking legions of the underworld. Holy fuck, what are we gonna do against that?” he asks, feeling overwrought with panic the more he thinks about it. “We're eight guys, what the fuck are we gonna do against the Legion?”

It calls to Jimin.

He is out in the front yard with his legs crossed, raised slightly from the ground. His fingers are loose and relaxed, his hands atop his knees. He meditates—communes with nature. He knows the animals he sent are dead. He felt them die, saw it happen at the hands of the monster trying to fit itself into the skin of a boy and he mourns them. Around him are the animals that have found their way to Seokjin's property for safety and protection. They are calm and even Jeongguk's presence doesn't disturb them as he walks up behind Jimin to sit beside him, awkwardly mimicking his position until Jimin's body touches the ground.

“Can you hear it,” Jimin asks.

“Yeah,” Jeongguk replies, his voice a shiver. “S'screaming. Don't think anyone else knows.”

“Not yet,” Jimin nods, and he reaches out to hold Jeongguk's trembling hand. The younger man is terrified, and rightfully so. Jimin looks over at him and sees the skull painted on his features, sees that his skin has turned black and red, that the white of the bones is stark. “It's calling you.”

“It wants me to go,” Jeongguk replies. “I won't. She won't let it take me.”

“Erzulie,” Jimin says.

“Yes,” Jeongguk whispers. “She's. She's keepin' me here. Keepin' me safe. She told me... She told me it'd be bad, Jimin, so fuckin' bad but it's so much more than I thought _,_ ” he looks down and Jimin sees his tears. Pities them. Jeongguk is so young and so full of power and so, so afraid. “It's getting' t'Hyuk. He... he looked a'me this mornin' n'god I thought he was gonna hurt me.”

“You're in separate rooms,” Jimin asks.

“Yeah,” Jeongguk agrees, and Jimin wonders just how Jeongguk is really handling the situation, but now is not the time to ask. “But he's a mundie, Jimin, no matter what magic deal he's made, no matter how fuckin' strong he is. He's still a fuckin' human and it's getting' t'him. I can't protect him, she won't let me.”

“Do you want me to talk to Hoseok?”

“F'you think a blessin's gonna fix it,” Jeongguk whispers, squeezing Jimin's hand and staring out over the yard. “She won't let me help him. Jealous girl. Says I can't, says it won't do no good anyway.”

“I'll ask Hoseok,” Jimin says, and brings Jeongguk's hand up to his mouth to kiss it, sweetly. He's just as scared as Jeongguk but he can defend himself. Has the Hunt to call on if he needs to. Has Hoseok. But all Jeongguk has is the whim of the loa who claim him, and while their power is great they can be fickle, petty creatures.

“Thank you,” Jeongguk says, and he leans into Jimin, slumping down until he's laying on the bed of pine needles with his head on Jimin's thigh and Jimin's hands in his dirty hair.

For the next hour Jeongguk rests uneasily, and Jimin doesn't try to make him move. Instead he tries to focus on what he'd seen. The boy, laughing wildly, screeching like a beast as he killed the animals with no human strength, as he cracked the bones of the skulls in his sharp, sharp teeth.

Jimin knows the legends of the area, of course. He knows about Giwakwa, about what happens to men who eat the flesh of other men. He knows the boy has probably been forced into unnatural acts while housing whatever the evil truly is. The physical manifestations are obvious. The sharpened teeth and elongated body, the lankness of his hair and the blackness of his eyes. Jimin watches him for a very long time: watches him creep back into the trailer, miserable, covered in sick. Watches him bathe himself, crying, a hand clapped over his mouth but he wakes the other person in the trailer anyway. A smaller young man with dark hair who looks like a starvation awareness poster, but who... Glows. He's almost backlit, a sparkling outline around his body and this boy, Jimin thinks, this is the boy the rabbit is looking out for. The black rabbit, the Guardian. There is something... Special, about him. Something being restrained with great ferocity.

Jimin flees the body of the robin as quickly as he can when the first boy snaps his head toward the window with unnatural speed, his face twisted and warped and ugly. He lingers in space for a moment, relaxes when the robin flits away, still alive.

He's been given a lot to think about, now.

His hand resumes its stroking of Jeongguk's hair. _Hoseok?_ He calls, eyes closed. _Could you speak to Sanghyuk, please? He's not well._

_I'll look into it, lover._

_Thank you._

~

Wonsik knows he's healed, no matter what Namjoon wants to believe. His ribs are unbroken, his bruises nearly gone, and now he's good and _mad,_ riled up and ready for a fight. That damned thing, whatever it is, has tried to keep him from this place. Has tried to hurt him, to hurt the people he deems his family, and he is going to beat it senseless, whatever it is. Whether he uses magic or his fists is inconsequential. He just wants to fucking _hurt_ something.

Frost simply sits and watches him stretch his arms and legs out in the backyard, watches him move through the motions of readying himself. It's coming, he can feel it. He's felt it since the morning, when Jimin went outside and started his communion just after dawn. It's getting ready, the evil thing. It's flexing it's muscles in an attempt at intimidation.

Wonsik is more than ready to meet it.

He's snarling to himself in frustration when Frost brings him his cell phone. It's Jaehwan calling, and he picks up and tries not to let his agitation be heard. “Hello Lee Jaehwan, darling dearest, light of my life, keeper of the keys to my heart. What can I do for you.”

 _You could try not to be so much of a fucking nerd for a start,_ Jaehwan's laugh is like bell-blossoms ringing out and Wonsik's tension unwinds a little. _I just wanted to see how you were. You've been gone two weeks and you haven't called._

“Two weeks?” Wonsik asks, frowning. “What do you mean, two weeks? We've been gone four days.” He can almost see Jaehwan shaking his head.

_It's definitely been two weeks, Wonsik. You left on the tenth, right? It's the twenty-fifth._

“That's impossible,” Wonsik says, feeling something awful wrench in the pit of his gut.

 _I wouldn't lie to you,_ Jaehwan says, and Wonsik knows that to be true. Jaehwan is a terrible liar, couldn't hide anything from Wonsik even if Wonsik wasn't magical. _Sweetness you've been gone two weeks. The guys at your job called me to see if you were okay since you haven't reported back._

“Fuck,” Wonsik says, quietly and without much inflection. “Fuck. All right. I'll... I'll call you back as soon as I can babe, okay? We're gonna try to wrap this up soon,” there hadn't been any talk of it but Wonsik could feel it: all inhabitants of the house starting to mount their power, readying themselves for the fight ahead. “N'I'll make sure to call you on the way back. Deal?”

 _Deal,_ Jaehwan says, smiling so gently. _And, sweetness. Can you do me a favor?_

“Yeah?” Wonsik asks.

_Give me a kiss?_

Wonsik smiles, feeling so very heart-tender and loved as he closes his eyes and thinks very hard about kissing Jaehwan on the temple, at his hairline, on the back of his neck where it brings him the most comfort. Jaehwan sighs.

_I miss you so much, Wonsik. Come home soon._

“I will,” he promises, and they hang up. Wonsik swallows, offers his phone back to Frost, and heads inside where Namjoon and Seokjin are pouring over a map of the area, covered in marker and pins. “Did you know we've been gone two weeks on the outside?”

“What?” Namjoon asks, frowning.

“We've been gone two weeks,” Wonsik repeats. “Jaehwan just called.”

“You're sure he wasn't yanking your chain?” Taehyung asks, and Wonsik glares at him with perhaps a bit more menace than is necessary. “What?”

“Jaehwan can't lie to me,” he replies, pacing. “Like, literally can't. He says we been gone two weeks, that means this place is _distorting time._ That kind of magic is nearly impossible without a tool, without an implement to work through.”

“So it's found an implement,” Seokjin says.

“It's found a _person,_ ” Jimin replies as he walks into the room, holding Jeongguk's hand. “It's working through a person. It was trying to work through one and it didn't work, so it found the next closest one and it's wearing them down.”

“You felt it?”

“Saw it,” Jimin says. “Through the eyes of a robin. It didn't kill it—thank mercy—but I think it knew I was watching. It dragged them both back inside. The place is like a... A Maw. There's no other way to describe it.”

“No,” Seokjin breathes, giving a visible shudder. “A Maw? Here? How could I have _missed_ that?”

“Because it looks and acts like a Gate,” Wonsik says, a series of events clicking into place. “When I first came here, it was closing around a boy, I banished it—I didn't think it was anything but a demon, but if the demon came through a Maw then—”

“Then there's a Lord of Hell,” Namjoon says. “Just like you thought, Wonsik.”

“I thought maybe it was a rogue,” Wonsik says. Taehyung is shivering, coming up to hug Seokjin in fear. “Not that it had a fucking Maw behind it, not that it had power over the fucking legions of the underworld. Holy fuck, what are _we_ gonna do against that?” he asks, feeling overwrought with panic the more he thinks about it. “We're eight guys, what the fuck are we gonna do against the Legion?”

“We're not going to panic, first of all,” comes Hoseok's voice from the stairwell. Sanghyuk is behind him, looking absolutely wiped as he follows. “Panic isn't going to help. We just have to think about our resources and plan accordingly. Jimin, you said it's acting through two people? Just two, you're sure?”

“Yes,” Jimin says.

“And it's distorting time, is that what I heard from upstairs? Maybe there aren't any real people here, maybe it's created the illusion and when we passed through that first Gate we came into a separate plain.”

“That's impossible,” Taehyung whispers.

“Not for a Maw Legion, it's not,” Wonsik hisses. “Fuck, I hadn't even thought of that. That's why it hurt so fuckin' bad to come through. I thought it was gonna kill me.”

“It almost did,” Seokjin confesses, putting a line of sharpie on the map in a sharp X. “Look. You came through here, at the road sign. The path to our place is here,” another X. “So it's covering the entire north side of the mountain, including everything in it's shadowpath.”

“That includes the hill,” Taehyung says.

“Yes. And the trailer park. I think we can safely assume that the boys in the trailer park are the only two there. Everything else is just an illusion. Very cleverly crafted, but an illusion.”

“It must have separated when you went for supplies,” Taehyung says. “Remember? It saw you on your way there, and you took the long way back—because it cut you off from going the short way. Then it extended it's reach to the sign to try and make sure no one else could get in.”

“That makes sense, Namjoon says, biting into his lip. “All right. All right, so if we assume it's power is concentrated here,” he points to the Devil's Headstone, marked with a red pin. “Then we can plan an attack. All out brute force, no pussyfooting around. This is real, this is fucking dangerous, and we can't let it spread.”

“Do you think it'll stop if we kill the people it's using?” Jeongguk's voice is tiny.

“I'd prefer not to kill them, if we can avoid it,” Namjoon admits. “But the good of the many, and all that. If we have to kill them, then we kill them.”

Hoseok flinches, but nods. “All right. What order are we going in? There's going to have to be a gate-opener in each group—”

“Wait,” Jimin says, suddenly. “Wait. I felt it all this morning. It's probably getting ready to push through, right? So soon it'll have to concentrate all it's energy on getting through the mortal body. It probably can't maintain the strength of the barrier _and_ get through the mortal. That's when we strike.”

“That's assuming an awful lot,” Namjoon says.

“I think he's right,” Jeongguk says. “It was _roiling_ this morning, starting to bubble over. It probably won't be long. N'anyway, me n'Sanghyuk should go first,” he glances over at his partner, who nods. “I'll bring whoever I can, n'Sanghyuk's not susceptible to most magic, so we can probably bully our way in through the first wave of... Whatever they've got for us.”

“We gotta drop the barrier first, whatever of it is still being maintained,” Wonsik says. “Namjoon n'me'll go first. Then you two.”

“Then me and Seokjin, right?” Taehyung asks. “We can clean up whatever's left in the way.”

“And then you two,” Namjoon says, looking over at Jimin and Hoseok, who both nod very solemnly. “Clearly it's got a hand in the natural, Jimin, you're gonna have to deal with that and Hoseok—you're going to have to close the Maw. I hope your God is with you.”

“He is always with me,” Hoseok assures, his expression grim.

“All right,” Namjoon nods. “All right. Get your tools together, then. Be ready. Once this shit starts, there's no stopping it. It's very literally do or die.”

“Way to be encouraging,” Taehyung says, his chin on Seokjin's shoulder. “Shouldn't it be something like, eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die?”

“When _we die_ could be in two hours,” Sanghyuk mutters, and Jeongguk punches him in the arm. “Ow, what?”

“Get ready,” Namjoon says. His word is final, and the house gives a hard shudder around them.

~

Sanghyuk looks at Jeongguk across the small room. Jeongguk is pale, his skin shimmering with blessing, and he looks away. He knows he scared Jeongguk that morning. He's not sure... Why, or how. But he knows he did. Hoseok had sat him down in the single bedroom, had searched his being and taken away all of the insidious evil that had been soaking into him since he came here, left him feeling weak and shivery and taken advantage of. The house protects the magical people more than the mundies, but Sanghyuk is a mundie, beneath it all. Maybe he's perceptive and extremely strong but he's still a mundane.

 _Sanghyuk,_ Hoseok had said, as gentle as the rustling of leaves. _Sanghyuk, may I talk to you?_

“I'm sorry,” Sanghyuk says, feeling foolish. “For... For this morning. I should have been more vigilant.”

“Ain't much to be vigilant against,” Jeongguk says. His body language is closed off and frightened and Sanghyuk hates himself. “I trust you were given somethin'ta help.”

“Yeah,” Sanghyuk nods. Hoseok had blessed him, and Seokjin had given him a bracelet to ward off wicked magic. _It won't work against everything,_ he'd warned. _But most things. Keep it. It'll help you._ “Yeah but I'm... I'm still sorry, Jonny. I shoulda known somethin' was wrong.”

Jeongguk looks at him from across the bed and Sanghyuk's heart _aches,_ because all he wants to do is love him but he can't... Can't feel it. Just feels self-loathing and disappointment and apology when Jeongguk looks at him with compassion and affection and, god, love. Sanghyuk misses that sensation, the feeling of love, so foolishly traded away when he was a child for... For what? For nothing, because he'd been such a stupid fucking kid. Stupid little boy armed with rage and a stick.

“S'okay,” Jeongguk says, and Sanghyuk shakes his head.

“It isn't,” he whispers, biting into his lip. “It isn't okay, Jeongguk, it—”

But then Jeongguk is standing in front of him, cupping his jaw. When had little Jonny South gotten so tall? When had the acne on his cheeks faded, when had his eyes become so very, very dark? Sanghyuk wants to kiss him. He can feel that still, at least. Lust. Want.

He knows they're supposed to be getting ready, he knows they're meant to be preparing themselves for a battle but Jeongguk pushes him down to the bed and straddles his lap and all Sanghyuk can think about is those soft pink lips and the way they slide over his own. That strong, smooth waist beneath his hands, Jeongguk's fingers tangled in his hair and he thinks that if he's going to die, he wants this to be his last memory: Jeongguk in his lap, kissing him, frantically unbuckling his belt and pulling his pants open, doing the same to himself. Forcing himself down onto Sanghyuk's erection with only enough lube to keep it from burning, panting into his neck and clutching the back of his head while Sanghyuk licks his neck, sucks the skin bruised and holds his thighs and backside to assist him in bouncing his weight. The bed creaks beneath them, and Jeongguk starts to shiver, to shudder and Sanghyuk can see the shimmering of his loa, of Erzulie, bright over his skin. She is beautiful, with her long hair and soft breasts, in how she rubs desperately against him and mewls his name in Jeongguk's voice. In how she, in Jeongguk's body, slides up and down and pulls his head to suck her nipples, to worship her. He hates her. He hates her and he wants her because she is a part of Jeongguk. She _is_ Jeongguk, and Jeongguk is her, in many ways. He lets her push him down, lets her slide up, before she eases back down and Sanghyuk is fucking up into a body that Jeongguk does not have, into hot wet with soft slaps of flesh and her hands all over him, urging him on.

He cums in her body, snaps his hips up and snarls, grabbing her hips and holding her down against his groin. She moans, she laughs and weeps and lifts her hips, slides him back inside of Jeongguk who is on top of him, trembling, his cock twitching with a little thread of cum attaching his tip to Sanghyuk's belly. Jeongguk shakes, and Sanghyuk knows he's been blessed by her, because she whispers in his ear,

 _you take care of my boy now,_ though her tone is not kind. _I want him to come back to me. And I suppose if he wants you to come back, then. I oughta take care of you, too. You make sure he comes back to me, Sanghyuk Han, and I'll make sure that wicked magic leaves you for good._

He gets the impression of her tucking back his messy hair, feels the sensation of a comforting, almost motherly cradling of his head. _Nobody deserves what you've wished upon yourself. But I don't do anything for free._

Sanghyuk licks his lips and reaches up. He struggles to push himself to the headboard and tugs Jeongguk down to his chest, kissing his face all over, rubbing his hands up and down that bony back. “You're so beautiful,” he promises, and he's speaking to Jeongguk, and to her. “I've got you. I won't let it hurt you. I'll bring you home, Jonny. Alive and kicking, I promise.”

~

The house holds all of her occupants very carefully. She feels the pacing, agitated familiars snapping at one another. She feels her boys touching one another in the safety of their bedroom, carefully choosing charms and pendants for themselves and for the others, if they'll wear them. She feels Wonsik and Namjoon, each desperately missing their loved ones and using thoughts of them to bolster their determination. She feels Jimin and Hoseok sitting quietly against one another, because they don't have to be nude to make love and she feels Jeongguk and Sanghyuk, post-coitus and kissing, desperately afraid. She wishes there is more she could do. She wishes she could fix it all, somehow. Could let her magic go with them and then it occurs to her that she can. Of course it's possible to take a little piece of home with them.

She gives a great shudder and leaves on the kitchen table ten rings. One for each of the men in her halls, and one for each of the boys who are ripping apart under the influence of the Bad Thing. She hopes it will help, as she lulls back into the dreamless sleep of houses and cities.

She's done all she can. All there is to do now is wait.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is going to be the end of regular updates for this (for now) since the story gets a bit choppy and i want it to maintain as much order as it can considering the content! patience, please!


	21. the lidless box, the orobouros

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is almost time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gross and somewhat gory imagery in this one. suicidal thoughts.

It is almost time.

It wriggles and writhes in it's slimy prison, slips over walls long-smoothed with it's motions. It is like the yolk inside an egg, padded on all sides by not only the shell but the white, though it's eaten through nearly all of that now. The boy has helped immensely. It had been intent on the pale one but this one, with his sharp teeth and passionate heart, has done just as well. He is unfit for inhabitation, however. He will likely die when it rips through him to climb into the first body it'd wanted.

It has made the boy do unspeakable things with his mortal hands. But it had not known of the third eye, so large in the boys mind, locked up tight with no visible way to break through. It is not an opener, and so it will focus itself like a drill bit and it will force it's way.

Then it will take the other. It will take the other and make him eat the first and it will enjoy the pain it causes as it always does. It has been trapped for so long. Eons beyond the memory of man, putting itself forward in visions of monsters until the humans all fled the place, burned it. It worked so hard to bring these two after they stumbled into its house and soon it will once again be upon the skin of the earth as it has so desired. All for the cost of two measly human boys.

It jiggles and shudders and shrieks with laughter and the boy at the sink drops to his knees, holding his head. It's so close now. All it has to do is rip open those doors and the world will once again belong to it and to it's brethren, waiting on the other side for it to carve a path.

The old woman tried to get in the way. It blocked her off but the boy doubts, now, truly doubts. He has been afraid for a long time but now he is eying the kitchen knives and thinking about killing himself and it can't have that. It can't. The boy must be _alive_ in order for it to start moving through. If he dies in the process, so be it, but he must be alive when it _starts._

So it loosens it's grip. Just for a moment.

For now.

~

Hongbin stares at the knife block with intent. Everything feels so fucking wrong, it—he wants to kill himself, just to make it all go _away._ It would be so easy, he thinks, to just cut his wrists or his throat, but then he thinks of Yoongi.

Soft Yoongi, sad Yoongi, who is weak and tired and desperately in need of him. Someone has to make sure he eats, someone has to make sure he sits up. He is overcome with the need to be close to him and so walks back to the bedroom feeling as though he is floating.

There he is. Yoongi Min, tucked safe in bed right where Hongbin left him. Hongbin smiles weakly, feeling more like himself than he has in weeks, and crawls up into the bed. On all fours over Yoongi he presses kisses to his face, to his exposed neck and shoulder. Light butterfly touches, one hand in Yoongi's hair as he starts to wake and Hongbin kisses him on the mouth, slow and wet and deep. They kiss for days. Yoongi doesn't open his eyes—he simply moans, opening his lips to let Hongbin in, turning completely onto his back and reaching up to hold Hongbin's shoulders.

“Bean?” he murmurs between kisses, shivering when Hongbin shifts to pull down the blankets to expose his nude body. He's so skinny now. He's always been skinny but now he looks like he's dying, almost emaciated, and the bandages around his wrists are thick. They keep him from scratching at his skin where his bracelets touch, the metal suddenly a great irritant to him. Hongbin had wrapped them in a t-shirt and then in proper bandages, winding the metal up between layers of gauze to keep them from moving against Yoongi's hands or arms. Hongbin bends to nudge their noses together, kisses Yoongi's soft, pale lips. “Bean.”

“Hey,” Hongbin whispers, feeling like he's coming home after a long night of being somewhere else, feeling guilty and neglectful and so glad to be back. “Hey baby, how are you?”

“Tired,” Yoongi breathes, and Hongbin moves to lay down beside him, pulls the blankets up over their bodies. He has a distinct feeling of... Of calm before the storm, but all he wants to do is lay there with Yoongi and kiss him and kiss him and hold him and...

Hongbin is scared of love. He'll be the first to admit it. It terrifies him, the idea that he could, would want to, give all of himself to someone else. Not because he's afraid of being in love, he's just... Very afraid of turning into his parents, who said _I love you_ but didn't mean it, who screamed at one another, sometimes hit one another. Who told Hongbin they loved him and in the same breath told him they wished he'd never been born, or that he'd died out there in the swamp with the old witch Mamie Madison.

He doesn't think Yoongi will hurt him. It's an irrational fear, one that Yoongi tolerates but suffers for, and Hongbin feels suffocatingly guilty as he holds Yoongi to him and kisses his hair, his forehead. Hums _Ave Maria_ because it's one of Yoongi's favorite songs and he likes listening to it when they go to bed. His voice warbles a little but the tune is clear and he can feel Yoongi smiling into his neck.

“I love it when you sing,” Yoongi murmurs.

“You're a weirdo,” Hongbin replies, and Yoongi laughs, weak, and hugs him a little closer.

“I love you,” he says, and it's a breath into Hongbin's messy, unwashed hair. He wants to say something, he wants... He wants to say it back, he wants to be unafraid but he can't. He can't.

“I know,” he replies, desperate to do... Something, to show Yoongi how much he cares about him, even if he can't say it outright. “Do you want a bath, babe? I think you still have one bomb left.” Yoongi shifts in his arms and his limbs are like sharp sticks as he nods and pushes up.

“Shower first,” he says, looking down at his nude chest. “We fuckin' smell.”

“Probably,” Hongbin laughs weakly, getting out of bed to help Yoongi out of bed. He feels... Like something is trying to smother his concern for Yoongi. Like his brain is telling him he doesn't need to worry about the fact that his boyfriends ribs are visible, that the peaks of his hips are bruised or about the fact that his skin is paper-white and his lips are the color of cherry chapstick. His eyes are dark and his cheeks are hollowed and his jaw is so sharp Hongbin could cut himself on it. Something in him doesn't want to worry about any of those things and Hongbin hates it.

So he guides Yoongi, very carefully, to the bathroom. He runs the hot water in the shower, climbs in with him to wash his hair and body, fingers lingering only to offer affectionate kisses or hugs, mouths giggling when one of them splutters or slips.

“Don't fall, champ,” Yoongi teases, sounding more like himself than he has in forever and Hongbin laughs, grabbing at the bar on the side of the shower to keep his balance.

“I won't!”

They climb out of the tub in their towels, the bathroom door closed to keep in the heat as Hongbin runs the water for a bath. The bath bomb Yoongi has squirreled away in the cabinet—the last one he has—is dark purple, shimmering gold and black. “It's one of the galaxy ones,” he explains, carefully setting it into the water. Hongbin feels a strange and intense satisfaction watching the darkness fill the white tub. “So you're gonna be glittery.”

“So are you, starboy,” he points out, nuzzling against Yoongi sweetly until the thing is entirely dissolved and Yoongi, surprisingly spry, climbs into the water and looks up at Hongbin, expectantly.

Everything... Shifts.

Hongbin chokes on a scream as he realizes that Yoongi has just slid into a tub full of blood and gore. Dead animals and dead _men_ all over the floor of the massive bathroom, the bodies nailed to the wall and the mirror and hanging from the high ceiling. Then it is not Yoongi but a _thing_ that looks like him, with black, black eyes and a too-wide mouth and a too-long tongue. The bodies around them are young men Hongbin feels like he should know, feels like... They are familiar and yet not. They are dismembered, disfigured, have clearly been tortured to death by the myriad of tools handing on the walls around them.

He chokes on spit and horror as Yoongi slides the blood up over his arms and shoulders and he _giggles,_ like this hasn't become something awful, like he's not doing something horrendous. Then he looks up at Hongbin with quiet concern. “Bean?” he asks, and everything... Shifts back into place.

Yoongi is sitting in a bathtub full of dark purple water, black and gold glitter shimmering all over his skin and he's staring up at Hongbin like he's never been so worried in his life. “Bean? Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Hongbin swallows hard, beyond terrified as he slowly climbs into the tub and it flashes again, that horrific vision and he whimpers, hides his face in Yoongi's shoulder but it's not Yoongi, so when it reaches around to hold his hand in comfort Hongbin just shudders and holds back a scream.

 

~

After their bath, Hongbin disappears out into the woods and Yoongi sighs, shrugging into a pair of jeans and a black tanktop. He is covered in glitter from his hair to his feet but he doesn't care. If anything it makes him feel... Good. Otherworldly.

He scratches at his bandages as he goes to sit on the bottom stair of the porch and watches the world go by.

Then. Then there _is_ no world.

There is nothing but hard clay as far as the eye can see, bald like the ground at the Devils Headstone. In the distance Yoongi can't see anything aside from a dark line of trees and the sky, a sky that stretches on forever. It's so clean. So dark and sparkling with the distant explosions of stars. Yoongi loves the stars. His mother used to tell him they were angels, and that the crescent moon was God's thumbnail. Of course he'd grown out of these things but... To this day he looks at a crescent moon and raises his hand to match his thumb up with the curve just to imagine for a moment that he could touch the hand of God.

Somehow, thinking of such things is... Depressing.

He looks back down at the ground, and sees, crouched between his feet, a black rabbit.

She looks up at him and he reaches down to lift her up into his arms. She flops into his lap as he closes his thighs and rubs his fingers over her ears. “Aah, who's a pretty girl,” he asks, rubbing at her face, at her ears and paws. Soon she too is glimmering with shimmer, her dark fur sparkling. “You look just like my Babs,” he whispers, and wonders, idly, where his knife is. He hasn't.. Hasn't seen it in a long time, not since...

The rabbit looks up at him and Yoongi feels a heavy stone in the pit of his belly when he looks up and the world is still just... An endless expanse of grey clay. Hongbin hadn't disappeared into the woods after their bath. What happened after their bath? How long has it been? His hair is dry and his eyes are wide and he has no idea what the hell is going on. What...?

The rabbit hops down and lollops across the ground. Yoongi gets up to follow her. “Hey, wait,” he says, and he feels a bit like Alice as he follows the rabbit from the house out into where the yard would be, if there was any yard to be found. But there isn't anything. Nothing but the grey emptiness and when Yoongi turns back to see how far from the house he is his entire body freezes.

The house is still not ten feet behind him. The tall pine tree that grows up from the left side by the bedroom window is bare and the oak tree right beside is leafless and dark. On the porch stands Hongbin but it isn't Hongbin, it isn't. It can't be. It's Hongbin with teeth like one of those lantern fish from a deep water documentary, it's Hongbin with skin sallow and paperwhite, his shoulders draped in bearskin. His hair a long and tangled mess, his tongue lolling out against his chest, his face twisted up in demoniac and hysterical intent. Yoongi can't hold back a scream as he staggers, collapsing to the ground in abject mortification and fear. The rabbit hops up beside him, then up onto his chest. He stares at her, then up at Hongbin, who is flickering in front of him and is Hongbin again, looking confused.

“Babe?” he asks, and Yoongi's breath leaves his lungs. “Babe, are you okay? What are you doing out here, you're gonna hurt yourself.”

 _No,_ Yoongi wants to scream, to shriek, to run away as Hongbin reaches for him and carefully pulls him up from the ground, the rabbit falling to one side. Hongbin's grip is too fierce though his expression is still so gentle. Yoongi can't stop seeing that nightmare face. That horror show.

“Sorry,” he whispers instead, and Hongbin smiles, tucks back his hair and leans in to kiss him. Yoongi squeezes his eyes closed and flinches.

“Come on,” Hongbin says. “Let me put you to bed.”

_Go to bed, sweet boy, sleep now... Sleep..._

Yoongi wakes in a cold room, alone. He shudders, violently, and drags the blankets up tighter around his body. A weight is holding them down and he stares out into the blackness before he reaches back, not daring to look, and touches cold flesh. Dead flesh. _Oh God,_ he whispers, but then the dead flesh is moving, shifting, curling up behind him and there is icy breath in his hair, a soft kiss to the back of his neck. “G'back t'sleep, babe,” Hongbin breathes, “Issto early.” His voice sounds just like it always does when he's tired, raspy and deep. Yoongi does not sleep. He lays there with the deadweight of Hongbin's arm over his body and the icy fingers locked around his own and he does not sleep.

He can't.

He lays there in the dark, shivering, waiting for the thump of a heartbeat that never comes as he watches the stars twinkle through the window as though nothing is wrong. There is only the sound of Hongbin's voice but it's not his voice. It is wet, slithering and terrible, and it is directly in Yoongi's ear as Hongbin's arm clamps tight, so tight it hurts.

_Hello, Lover._

And all the stars go out.

 


	22. no turning back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It's happening,” Jimin says, and his voice is a whisper that echoes through the entire house. “It's time.”

“It's happening,” Jimin says, and his voice is a whisper that echoes through the entire house. “It's time.”

~

Wonsik is the first downstairs, face grim as he cracks his knuckles and adjusts his bracers. They are lined with crystals now, nearly completely covered. He wears a necklace of them also, hanging down like a protective net down his collarbones and chest beneath his open shirt. It's best to work offensive magic in as few layers as possible—they're probably just going to catch fire, anyway, in his case. He's been spelling them for hours, each ingrained with tiny runes for protection, for strength and stamina, anything he can do to make sure he lasts as long as he can. If whatever the beast is had just been fucking with him when they got through the first time, he doesn't want to take any chances. He doesn't call Jaehwan, though he thinks about it. He'd probably cry.

Namjoon appears after him, Nyra stalking behind. Namjoon _looks_ like Nyra, cattish, skin shimmering gold-green and his eyes a bright and flashing yellow. The two of them, in times of great danger, become one another. Namjoon has many gifts but this is the greatest of all, that he and his familiar can be one immensely powerful, clever creature. They don't do it very often, because it's very hard for them to come apart. The melding isn't without it's own dangers but Namjoon has weighed his options very carefully and decided that this is the wisest course. The least likely to end in death.

Taehyung and Seokjin come down hand in hand. Taehyungs hips hold sheathes for what Jimin knows are spelled machetes on chains strapped to his wrists. The improvised weapons are perfect for Taehyung's wild spellwork. Seokjin has a wand on one hip, a whip on the other. They seem... Calm. They stand beside one another and together they look like ancient warriors, dressed in leathers as they are.

Jeongguk is already in War Paint, eyes dark, and Sanghyuk carries only a great oaken stick, longer than he is tall, tipped at either end with a little slice of metal magicked so sharp it might cut a diamond, and blessed by both Hoseok _and_ Jimin, when last they met.

Hoseok.

Hoseok comes down with his staff and he looks at the table, at the rings there, and smiles. It doesn't escape his notice that there are ten of them, each of them identical. Seokjin helps Jimin to give them out, each ring sizing to fit the right middle finger, since all of them are right-handed, save Taehyung, who wears it on his left.

“They're a gift from the house,” Seokjin explains, offering a second ring to Hoseok, watches as he puts it into his pocket, while Jimin does the same with the last ring. “It's lovely, isn't it? Magicked by all of us. She wants to help.”

“The blessing of a home is a good thing to be carried,” Namjoon says, though his voice is gravelly. It won't be long before the transformation is complete and he and Nyra will be a huge beast-cat. “Lets go. I don't want to wait.”

They make their way out to the truck. Seokjin and Taehyung ride in the front seat and the rest of them climb into the bed, their familiars loping easily behind as they make their way down and around the mountain with increasing speed as the urgency of the situation starts to hit Seokjin. They reach the last barrier—the one Wonsik and Namjoon will have to fight through—at what had always looked like the entrance to the trailer park, but what is now simply a heaving, seething mass of black walls and oily water, the stench emanating from it vile enough to make Taeyung gag as they all get off the truck and onto the ground.

“You know the rules,” Jimin says, and his voice reaches all of them in the terrible silence. “Don't run. Name your weapons. Don't ever look back, no matter what happens. Don't. Otherwise it will get you. It might be something out of a Maw but it's using the forest rules, so you have to obey them.” There is a murmur of affirmation from all as they head toward the horrible thing, like a huge dome over the world.

Wonsik licks his lips. Adjusts his bracers one last time and looks over at Namjoon. They've been partners a long time now. They're friends. He offers out his hand to be held for a moment, tries to assure Namjoon that it's going to be okay. Namjoon speaks, and Wonsik's heart drops.

“If I don't make it,” he says, staring at the slimy visual of the barrier like blood over oil. “Tell. Tell Jia Er, okay? Don't. Don't let him see what's left of me.” He's already completing the change. Nyra is behind him and yet she is becoming him, they are turning into one huge, monstrous winged cat, with three scorpion tails and a mask of smooth gold on their face.

“Same goes for you,” Wonsik mutters, rolling his shoulders, bracing his weight. He can feel the others behind him. He has to push through for them. He's terrified, he can _feel_ the evil pouring over him but he has to be brave. He has to be strong, and brave, he has to pave the way for the others, no matter what happens. _Come home soon,_ Jaehwan had said. He feels the comforting presence of Frost just behind him and takes in a deep breath to allow Frost to assimilate into him, for their power to become one, for the time being. Frost is monstrous because Wonsik is monstrous, and the surge of magical force feels like a bass thump across the skin of the world. Wonsik is nearly glowing, his hair floating around his head as though he were underwater, like the molecules of the earth can't quite touch him.

With one last hard swallow, Wonsik holds up his hands. He holds up his hands and whispers into the air and the barrier does not shatter so much as it surrounds and swallows him and in the process makes room for the rest of them to get through. He hears Taehyung scream. The blackness folds itself over Wonsik like a terrible length of wet silk, wrapping him up, choking him, strangling his cries and crushing him. All the crystals on his body are shattering, he is screaming, it hurts so much. It hurts so much but what hurts more is that he can hear Jaehwan screaming in pain, he can hear his lover shouting for him, desperately, and he cannot go to him. The world is narrowed into a tunnel and Wonsik strains, fights, claws through the dark in a never-ending chase to try and save Jaehwan, and Namjoon and Jackson and all his friends but he just—he can't _reach—_

Seokjin has to drag Taehyung through the barrier because he can't move.

They make it through to the other side. It's so quiet. So still.

“Wonsik,” Taehyung whispers, staring ahead of himself, trembling.

“We gotta go,” Namjoon growls, pacing ever forward. Before them stands a sphinx. With the face of a rotted god it stands, snarling, and Namjoon wiggles his shoulders. His tails twitch. The second the creature opens its mouth to speak Namjoon is upon it, biting it's throat, clawing, the sound of two cats screeching ricocheting off of the trees and echoing into the world. There are huge feathers, claws and teeth and Seokjin stares in horror as the blackness wraps them up and makes them disappear, just as Wonsik had.

Taehyung whimpers in terror, holding his pendant tightly as Hoseok murmurs that they just have to keep walking. That they can't stop, they have to go.

“Walk,” he whispers. “Don't run. Don't attract it's attention.” They make it a fair distance. Taehyung is trying not to be loud about it but he is crying, clinging to Seokjin but it's not trying for him. Not yet.

It comes for Jeongguk, next.

It writhes up in front of him in the shape of a tall, thin man with teeth like tombstones and Sanghyuk stops, two steps behind him, bracing his grip on the staff.

“ _Go,_ ” Jeongguk hisses, not looking away from the creature in front of him. A creature in a tall grey hat, clad in silver-grey clothes, with white and read eyes and black lips. Sanghyuk gives a full body shudder and sees the teal-gold shimmer of Erzulie Freda, vainly trying to protect Jeongguk from whatever is facing him now. “Go! Sanghyuk, go!”

The thing looks over Jeongguk's shoulder to face Sanghyuk and it is everything Sanghyuk has ever feared a loa to be. It is cruel and so human in it's cruelness, it is grinning and reaching for him and he can't move. There's no getting away from it, he thinks. It sees him. It knows he is there.

Then Jeongguk is between him and it. Jeongguk is facing him, facing _back_ , eyes bright and wide and afraid and so full of love that Sanghyuk can't—he can't—

“Go, Hyuk. Please?”

“Jeongguk—”

Then Jeongguk is gone, yanked back into the dark. It billows around him, suffocates him and Sanghyuk whips around to face the giant Jersey Devil that attempted to catch a dirty blow while he wasn't looking. He slaps the stick into it's face and slams it down into its head. Sanghyuk killed a Jersey Devil at fourteen with nothing but a stick and his bare hands. Now he is twenty-two and he's going to kill a Jersey Devil with a stick and his bare hands and primal rage.

His roar of anger and loss makes Taehyung tremble as they just... Keep walking. It's plucking them off, one by one. It's tearing them apart from one another and if he listens he can hear Wonsik screaming. Can hear Namjoon being torn to shreds and Jeongguk's bones being snapped into a million pieces and—

Seokjin stops walking. He is standing in front of a tall brick house in Boston. He is staring up and looking for the house number but number three-ninety-three isn't there. There is no house. No family, no magic. He gropes for his wand and his whip, snarls. “Come out here, you coward,” he shouts. “Don't you hide in the dark like a snake!”

But what emerges from the dark is not a snake but Taehyung, tall and confident, lacking his characteristic slouch and soft expression. He looks proud, sneering and hideous, and he twirls the chains of his machetes in his hands with a grin that looks like broken glass.

Seokjin slips quietly into the dark, like sliding under the water in a bathtub.

Taehyung sobs wretchedly, making it another ten feet before dropping to his knees and gasping for air, for Seokjin. It is Taehyung's worst fear to be alone, to be helpless and alone and _afraid,_ and Jimin and Hoseok keep walking because they have to. They can't stop, he knows that. He is left alone for the thing to reach up from the ground in tentacles like ropes that wrap around his throat and torso and legs to drag him down, down, down.

Then Jimin and Hoseok are alone.

And still they walk, facing forward, never looking back.

 


	23. wonsik kim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Wonsik Kim is five, he wakes up screaming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a little history on wonsik kim.

When Wonsik Kim is five, he wakes up screaming.

His bedroom is alight with blue and violet flames, all of his furniture is levitating, and in the corner of the room a huge black demoncat with a grin like a graveyard murder stares, eyes impassive, finally there in it's solid form, a form it has anticipated for nearly a year now. Wonsik screams and cries until his parents come in and even then his sobbing doesn't subside for nearly an hour, once all of his furniture hits the floor. He clings desperately to his mother, wails into her shoulder and slurs out that he's scared, that something is trying to get him, that something is chasing him, make it go away, make it go away.

And the demoncat just stares.

~

The cat realizes, after a few days, that Wonsik cannot see it. The boy is so terrified of his own power that he cannot _see_ the familiar he created that night in May, three months after his fifth birthday. He's so young to have created a familiar so huge and powerful. Wonsik's parents can't see it, either. There is talk of sending him to a specialist, a mage who may be able to assist their small son in learning to control himself, but it will not have that. No, Wonsik must stay with him, must stay close to him for his own safety.

It takes on a... Less frightening form.

Bobcats are, at the moment, Wonsik's favorite creature. He likes their huge paws and furry ears and so this is the form it takes: a bobcat, larger than usual, but nowhere near it's true size. Wonsik sees it meander up from the treeline and it takes a few minutes for the boy to realize what he's seeing.

“Oh,” he says, smiling. “He, Hello.”

 _Hello,_ it says, and Wonsik shrieks in happiness and excitement. It must take a moment to enjoy it: normally when Wonsik is screaming it is a sound of pure fear and pain. _Hello, Wonsik._

“Hi,” Wonsik hums, burying his face in it's big shoulder, nuzzling like he was a kitten himself and it feels itself being given a name. Not the name Wonsik calls it, not _Frost._ A true name. A name of power and strength and intent. _Felinaus,_ it is named, instead of _Bakeneko_ or _Chetsheer_ and so the demoncat becomes a protector, a guide, and a friend.

It is Frost who realizes just how much Wonsik is suffering.

His little companion struggles with most physical tasks, can't be out in groups of humans without collapsing in fits and is constantly exhausted, napping frequently. It is Frost who realizes that Wonsik is too powerful for his tiny human frame. In light of this, Frost takes in as much of Wonsik's surplus magic as he can, becoming bigger. Stronger. There are nights when he must flee the house to release the force into the atmosphere with all the terrifying power of a lightning storm and it's all right, for a while. He makes it work.

When Wonsik is ten, he nearly kills himself.

He is upset. He is crying, hiccuping, hiding near the treeline after school where he's just been teased to tears for being _slow,_ for having a heavy accent, for being ugly or any variety of things which give children cause to be cruel. He is crying and the storm comes. It comes fast as winter, biting, snapping it's jaws and working itself _through_ Wonsik, coming out of him. By the time Frost finds him he is suspended in midair, limp, eyes unseeing as the rain lashes and the thunder snarls and Wonsik, goddess, he hangs in the middle of it all, little tears on his little face, staring up at the one point of blue sky in all the mess of clouds and rain and Frost carefully grabs his hand in his teeth.

All that surplus power nearly kills Frost. Familiar or not, in the form of the bobcat he cannot take in all that Wonsik puts out, so he lapses. Becomes the demoncat: eight eyed, six legged, two tailed. It's fur is short, dark grey and black and it takes in all the power easily, makes sure that Wonsik doesn't hit the ground when all the magic leaves him. He sets the boy, trembling and crying, on the leafy ground. Frost curls up around Wonsik, licks at his hair and noses him back into the safety of his belly every time he tries to get up. He treats Wonsik like a blind and tiny kitten and isn't surprised when Wonsik acts like one, snuggling into him and whimpering until he's asleep, fingers clutched in Frosts dark fur, nestled under one leg.

Frost brings him home that night. And many nights after.

Wonsik is never really _aware_ of how powerful he is. Frost makes sure of that. Power does funny things to people and Wonsik is so wonderful just the way he is. Normal, mostly. His parents have to pull him out of school at sixteen, when his hair starts to spark and no pendant will hide the unnatural shimmer most mundies see it as. He starts training to be a teacher at seventeen. Frost wonders if Wonsik will be able to handle himself, after all.

But when he is eighteen there is an accident. Some kind of explosion, some... Magical burst of energy that causes his apartment building to shake and Wonsik is running out, transporting his entire apartment somewhere else when he hears shouting for help and Wonsik—bless him—Wonsik can't ignore those things. He runs back in and finds Jaehwan Lee pinned in the stairwell, panting for air, panicked and shaking and crying and Wonsik doesn't think about staying hidden, he doesn't think about secrecy when he magicks the wooden beam holding Jaehwan in place out of the way to drag Jaehwan to his feet and pull him down the stairs as the building starts to collapse in on them. He doesn't think about secrecy when he pulls Jaehwan against him in the bottom corner of the stairwell and wraps them both in a shield with Jaehwan's head in his neck and his hand in Jaehwan's dark hair when the stairs crumble into blocks of concrete and dust.

And Jaehwan looks at him in wonder, instead of fear. Jaehwan holds his hands and says very sincerely, _thank you for saving me._ Jaehwan offers to buy Wonsik a coffee and then dinner and then they kiss and Frost is both very proud and a little annoyed that he has to share Wonsik with Jaehwan, who is absolutely mystified by magic in all it's forms. He's a literature student, training to be a librarian, and he's in love with Wonsik's personal library and with Wonsik himself. Frost had to confirm that, ever suspicious of the intentions of others, but there has never been any malice in Jaehwan at all. None.

Jaehwan had been delighted by Frost. Frost even leaves a small avatar of himself at the house when he and Wonsik go away on trips like this one but now. As the dark closes in on them Frost wonders if his avatar is dying. He feels like he is dying. Wonsik feels like he is dying. There are bones snapping and crystals shattering and Frost feels the tenuous grip he still has on Wonsik's power starting to fray. The darkness around them is doing strange things to Wonsik's mind, like it's wiggling into his brain and finding all his fears and shoving them into his being all at once—Jaehwan, dead, his parents gone, his magic gone, Frost gone. Losing control, killing someone, killing Jaehwan. It all happens in flashes and Frost can feel Wonsik lashing out against it, trying to keep it from ripping him apart from the inside out. It's... Draining them. It's sucking away Wonsik's power, Frost's power. Wonsik's life.

It's crushing his arms, breaking his bones. It's choking him. It's burning him and there is nothing Frost can do. No power in the world will do anything when it is being siphoned away by a legion of demons acting at the will of a Lord.

Wonsik's body is breaking under the immense pressure. His mind is fracturing.

Frost gives a pitiful mewl and tries to hold him together. He can hear Wonsik's panicked thoughts, all fluttering images and flashing fear and one little phrase over and over and over.

_Come home soon. I love you. Come home soon. I love you. Come home soon. I love—_

 ~

Jaehwan feels his kitten collapse in his lap, panting, crying. 

"Snow?" he asks, feeling something in his chest squeeze so hard it hurts to breathe. After a moment, she is not breathing at all. "Snow?" his eyes well. Spill over.

"Wonsik?"


	24. jimin park

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jimin is fourteen when he is given the power of the Green Man. The Horned One, The Forest Lord, he has so many names and Jimin, at fourteen, is given all of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for gory imagery.

Jimin is fourteen when he is given the power of the Green Man. The Horned One, The Forest Lord, he has so many names and Jimin, at fourteen, is given all of them. He's terrified of the power but he is determined to wield it fairly, to be a good King, as it were. His parents had been afraid for a very long time that he would never manifest any magic at all since he'd never formed a familiar, even after his younger brother had. He'd never shown any inclination toward magic at all and when he came home that night, pale and shivering and holding the horns of the King, his mother had been absolutely frantic.

For a very long time, all Jimin did was walk out into the dark woods and meditate. Convene with the forests he was now a part of. He spoke with the deer and the cougars, with the badgers and the raccoons and the weasels. Even the spiders and snakes, the owls and mice. They are his, and he is theirs. He met also with the Lords of the Fae Realm; Leo and En were beautiful creatures, playful creatures, tricksters and wielders of incredible power very _like_ Jimin's own, but not the same. He enjoyed spending time with them, learning about all the things that overlapped their dominions, and he found to his surprise that he was more comfortable with than than he was with most humans save perhaps Namjoon Kim, who had been his best friend since boyhood, and who was Not Impressed with Jimin disappearing all the time.

To be fair, Namjoon could only barely understand; he already had Nyra, was already a full-blown witch (though more of a sorcerer) with talents of his own and as much as he was mystified by Jimin he seemed determined, also, not to leave him alone no matter what decisions he made. They were friends. So when Jimin made the decision Namjoon respected it, and asked only that he contact him at least once in a while to let him know how he was doing, and Jimin had agreed.

Jimin walked into the forest at sixteen and a half and become a part of it forever. He wore his hair long, wove bones into his braids. He wore clothes made of leather, lived in a shelter he built himself. He grew in the magic and the life and the _green,_ and when Namjoon had brought Hoseok to him he felt a very primal urge to _keep_ him, to mate him, but he was a wild thing and Hoseok was not and in many ways they were incompatible.

Or so he thought.

Then they kissed in the bright sunlight. They fucked in the shade of the trees and love passed between them, what love Jimin was still capable of feeling. It was a distant thing, more of a... A need, than anything else. He needed Hoseok to understand that he cared for him, even though he spent his nights in dens of coyotes and his days with the deer. If Hoseok called, he would go.

And he did.

Only twice had he needed to call the Hunt in front of Hoseok and both times he hated it. Loathed it. It was terrifying magic; it was ancient and primal magic, one of the most powerful forces in the world and it was not meant for humans to see. Still he used it because he had to—the cost of not using it would have been too great. Both times he crawled back to Hoseok in miserable tears, and both times Hoseok had healed his soul with the balm of his God and his presence; Jimin never feels truly alone, when he knows Hoseok is present.

Hoseok gave him a cross, once. Jimin has woven it into the braid beneath his ear, tucked close to his neck. When they mate Hoseok tugs it with his teeth, kisses the skin it touches and Jimin is reminded that Hoseok is always with him, really. Even when he isn't physically there.

Hoseok is no longer at his side.

He has disappeared into the ether and Jimin is alone. He is alone, face to face with the shell of a boy. A young man with dark hair and dark eyes, his skin piebald with the red-black of demonic possession and Jimin knows that whatever has been hiding on this mountain has chosen this boy to claim. To work through. He knows this is the boy who was forced to kill and eat his watchers. This is the boy who bit into the skin of his companion like he was trying to rip away his flesh and Jimin can see that he is afraid.

He stands there, tall and thin and trembling and then suddenly he is screaming, tearing at his hair and forehead, clawing his nails as though trying to peel away the skin. “ _No,_ ” he is shrieking, crying, helpless against the actions his body is taking. “No no stop please no—stop it _,_ get out of me get—get out _—_ ”

His body is jerked to one side, then the other, as though hanging on great strings. Then he laughs. He laughs, his eyes completely black and blood dripping thick from his nose and he grins at Jimin and Jimin knows he is not looking at a young man but at a creature of evil, who is using this poor boy as a gateway to it's vile desires.

 _Your Highness,_ it cackles, laughing, the body it inhabits giving the occasional twitch to show it is fighting. The boy is fighting, no matter how hopeless it seems. Jimin has never felt anything so grossly wicked as this _thing_ in all his life and he is filled with terrible fear and loathing.

_The Great Green Man. Tree King. Lord of the Forests. It has been a very long time, little friend._

“I am no friend to you,” Jimin says, and the thing in the boys body laughs. It sounds like bones being knocked together.

 _All creatures are friends to the blackness, boy. There is nothing that does not slip into my hands._ The boy slips through for a moment, his eyes wide and his lips bloodied.

“Help,” he whispers, eyes wide before they roll black and the frightened grimace turns into a cruel grin. _“Yes,”_ it says, speaking through the boy, using his mouth and voice and it sounds wrong because Lords of Hell cannot speak as humans speak, their manner of speech is not meant to be translated through the human voice box. _“Yes, little Lord of the Forest, help him. If you can.”_

“Get out of him,” Jimin says, though he does not deceive himself into thinking that the creature will do so. Not when it's snapping his bones into unnatural positions, not when it is clearly trying to hurt him as much as possible before, most likely, jumping bodies. But why hasn't it come through yet? Why hasn't it forced it's way through the boy and out into the world? There is a reason, there must be. There is so much power concentrated here and yet the thing cannot move through.

“ _His name is Hongbin,”_ the demon says. _“Hongbin Lee. He grew up in your realm, you know, that mystical place there the forest crosses over with the fae lands.”_ It's voice is mocking and cruel. Jimin knows he is too young to know of what the demon speaks but he focuses on the boy himself. The body, slowly being broken. Snapped bones, sliced skin. The rips of the cheeks being pulled back to show all the sharpened teeth and the elongated jaw. It's been in him so long that he is physically changed by it. But why?

“Hongbin,” he says, hoping he can somehow reach the boy if he's not too far gone. He doesn't want to kill him if he doesn't have to. He doesn't want to kill him. “Hongbin can you hear me?”

“ _The boy is gone, Green Lord,”_ it hisses, and it snaps it's neck back and forth, not hard enough to kill, but enough to imply a struggle. _“The boy is gone and he is mine and soon the other will be too.”_

The other? The other boy he'd seen. The one who shimmered like a night sky, the boy guarded by the rabbit. What was so special about that boy? What had struck Jimin about him as so very... Strange? Not quite magical but not mundane? Mystical, unearthly, even, un...

Unearthly.

Oh, sweet Lord.

If Jimin thought Hoseok could hear him he would have shouted. He would have screamed, would have turned, but if he turns all is for naught. He's the only thing standing between the creature and it's goal and he'll just have to hope that Hoseok can understand what he's looking at with the help of his God.

There are very few creatures on the world touched by the stars. If a star is in perfect alignment at the time of birth something very special will be born. An oracle, perhaps. A sorcerer of particularly potent power. A startouched boy with dark eyes and pale skin. A startouched boy with bands of metal around his wrists to contain his power, likely put there by some benign force when he was a child, before the Guardian had a chance to become fully realized. The Moon Rabbit. Of course.

Jimin does not want to attempt fathoming the wickedness a Lord of Hell could wield with a startouched being as it's vessel. But still it is not moving from one to the other. Is it the bracelets the boy is wearing? Or is it the boy it inhabits now, something about him that is keeping it inside, killing him?

“And yet here you are,” Jimin says, his hand itching, trying to stall for what time he can while he scrambles to think of what to do. The Hunt struggles to rise but not yet, not _yet._ He can hear Hoseok talking, can feel the warmth of light on his back though he can't turn to look. Those are the rules. “Forcing your way through a mortal because you lack the strength to climb out of your filth on your own.”

It snarls, the expression horrible and unnatural. Hongbin's bones are starting to truly creak and strain under the pressure of the evil thing forcing it's way into his body. The boy is resisting, Jimin can see it. He can see him struggling, squeezing eyes closed, baring teeth, tearing at hair.

“No,” Hongbin says, pushing his hands against his forehead. “No you can't, no—stop it stop it you can't—I won't let you—”

 _Won't let me?_ The thing says, laughing horribly with the boys mouth even as his hands press harder against his forehead like he's... Like he's trying to keep something _shut._ Oh, Jimin's breath catches in his throat. Oh, no.

_And just how are you going to stop me, boy._

The boy looks up at Jimin and his eyes are so human. His gaze is so dark and sad and utterly lost. “Don't let it do this,” he whispers, lip trembling, gaze over Jimin's shoulder, presumably to the boy with Hoseok. “Don't let it do this, don't—kill me, don't let it get Yoongi, it's trying to get Yoongi—”

 _Silence yourself,_ it hisses, and the boy shakes his head violently.

“No! No, they closed it, they closed it! I won't let you, I won't—I won't let you through—Don't let it hurt Yoongi,” the boy gasps out, his face tight and covered in tears, teeth bared in pain. “Don't, it's gonna hurt Yoongi, it's gonna hurt him— _Silence, boy!”_

Hongbin's hands scramble at his neck, claw at his throat like something is choking him and Jimin swallows. He should call the Hunt. Call it now, before the thing has a chance to attempt moving. Something is happening to Hongbin, Jimin can see it. Like a door being forced open. He should call the Hunt. He should—

“Please,” Hongbin is on his knees now, gasping for breath. “Please you—kill me you gotta kill me, it's gonna kill everyone please you gotta—”

Jimin feels the presence of the Kings. Fae Kings, Lords equal to himself in power and they place their hands on his shoulders. “My Lords,” he whispers, watching Hongbin struggle, watching him choke and claw and cry. Everything is happening so slowly. His heart hurts. “What... What should I do?”

“It is killing him,” Leo murmurs sadly. “It is our fault. We closed the eye.”

“If we open it,” En says. “You will have a moment, only a moment, my Lord, to call the Hunt down upon him. It will kill him.”

“There are some things worth killing a mortal for,” Leo says, though his voice is low and devastated. Hongbin is of their realm, also, according to the thing. He is of their home, their lush gardens and magic-shimmering air, pixies and ents and tiny schools of flowing fish that had once led Hongbin through the swamps to old Mamie Madison's house. Had marked the path so he alone would always find the way. “Though it pains us.”

“Should we do it, my Lord,” En asks, and Jimin swallows. Hongbin is looking at him desperately, and Jimin squeezes his eyes closed.

“Do it,” he whispers, and as Leo and En reach out their hands to undo what they have done, Jimin raises his fist and Calls. He hears the rumbling of the Hunt, hears the baying of dogs and the snarls of boars and the screaming of enfields as they come to him. All the savage things of the forest gather to him, rolling like fog and writhing like monsters and beside him, En and Leo still have their hands on his shoulders in support.

Hongbin's third eye cracks open, and then it is moving through. Hongbin is impaled on it's evil and it fills him, leaking from every pore, twisting his body, laughing horribly as the third eye on his forehead is forced to full openness, bright blue and shining. Hongbin's expression is weak. His eyes roll from side to side as the thing controls his body, whips him back and forth and Jimin—he does what he has to.

He raises his fist higher into the air and moves it forward. He calls down the Hunt.

“Hongbin!” Jimin hears someone scream. “Hongbin— _no_ —”

It is green against black, life against decay and the Hunt comes to Jimin in all it's wild ferocity. He feels it in the ground and in the air and he regrets, like he always does, having to use it. But there are some evils he cannot quell and contain. There is some wickedness that must simply be destroyed, even if it means killing a human. A poor human boy whose eyes are slowly darkening as the diaphanous, shapeless thing slithers from his broken, desecrated body. The thing bubbles up like an overflowing well of putrid and blackened water, the filth of a thousand corpses. The smell is overpowering and Jimin gags, vomits onto the ground but keeps his fist tight on the Hunt. It's ravenous beasts are upon the thing like hounds on a fox. He listens to the sound of tearing flesh, of ripping _being_ and as the Hunt grows more powerful in force by eating what it is attacking he grips tighter. Leo and En stay at his shoulders, offering him what they can from these projections of themselves. It's never been so hungry, never been so hard to keep the reins on. Jimin has to control the beast, otherwise it's going to hurt everyone else.

If they're still alive.

 _Hold on,_ he hears Leo whisper into his ear. _Hold on, my friend._

 


	25. taehyung kim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taehyung Kim figures out that he is not normal when he is nine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> namjoon was supposed to come next but he is being Difficult™ so enjoy taehyung's chapter instead  
> tiny underage warning? taejin kiss o.o

Taehyung Kim figures out that he is not normal when he is nine. He sits in the back yard of the Section 8 housing his parents live in and watches the other kids as though he were seeing them through a pane of ancient glass: they are distorted, just enough to make him blink and rub his eyes. He sees them surrounded by hazy colors, some of them are pale and pretty, and some of them are dark and scary. When he goes back into the apartment and stares at his mother, he can see that she is swathed in pale blue, sparkling like faerie light and his father is in pale green like mint, and he sparkles too. And when they kiss one another goodnight, when they kiss him goodnight, the colors shimmer with little rainbows like the prisms he's learning about in school and when he tells his mother about it the next day, she has no idea what he's talking about. The more he insists, the more he can see her color changing, getting darker, and he purses his lips together and mutters that he's just imagining things and she kisses his head and hugs him extra tight before she tucks him into bed.

Taehyung figures out that no one else can see what he sees, and that scares him.

When he is in seventh grade, he sees Seokjin Kim for the first time.

His aura, as Taehyung now knows it is called, is _dazzling._

Prismatic, bright and sparkling and it gets brighter every time he laughs, the baby pink shooting through with baby yellow and coral, like a beautiful sunrise in chalk pastels. Taehyung stares at him for a very long time and when Seokjin turns to face him Taehyung looks down at his hands and doesn't say anything. He doesn't really talk in school—not in class, or on the bus. Everyone thinks he's _weird,_ and no one wants to be friends with him anymore, not since he'd had a fit when an older boy shoved him into his locker last year. The boy had been wrapped in dark green and lightning and Taehyung had been _afraid_ of him. He'd cried shamelessly as the boy hit him twice, his aura bursting with bloodlust red each time until a teacher came and separated them. He'd cried in the guidance office, saying he _knew_ the boy was going to come after him, that he'd seen it that morning, the way he cracked his knuckles and grinned like a weasel in a henhouse and no one believed him. No one believed him but he'd set himself up as a pariah and so no one wanted to be friends with him.

Taehyung doesn't have any expectations of making friends, anymore. He can see peoples auras and he knows they fade out when he comes near them, so he stays away. Spends time by himself out in the park or the back yard, and one afternoon in eighth grade he runs into Seokjin Kim at a McDonalds down the road from his house. His mom had asked him to get some sundaes for dessert and it was only a couple of blocks, but he'd run the whole way there because something felt... Something felt _bad,_ and he didn't know what it was.

Seokjin is in line in front of him, and Taehyung just stares at his hand, where his aura is still prismatic pink and shining, so beautiful, the brightest Taehyung's ever seen, except his parents. He is still staring when Seokjin asks if he's okay and Taehyung drags his eyes up to look at him.

Seokjin had been fifteen, then. He'd been tall and his hair had been dark and his eyes were _beautiful_ and Taehyung swallowed, nodded and looked down at the ground and Seokjin had... Well. He'd...

 _Look at me,_ he'd whispered into Taehyung's mind, and Taehyung had jerked his head up to stare in abject fear. _Oh, don't be scared,_ he said, and Taehyung swallowed. _I'm just glad you can hear me. You're special too, right?_

Taehyung doesn't think his ability to see auras is something special, but Seokjin just smiles and Taehyung gets weak in the knees like people tell him he should be for girls and there's probably something wrong with that but Taehyung doesn't care. At all.

 _I'm Seokjin,_ he says.

After a moment, and a lot of concentration,

_My name is Taehyung Kim._

~

Seokjin introduced himself to Taehyung's parents that very afternoon, having walked him back home so the _bad feeling_ he had wouldn't paralyze him. He'd told them he was a sophomore and he lived about a mile away, and he knew Taehyung from school and hadn't wanted him to walk home alone. Seokjin became his go-to babysitter, and he took the time they had together to teach Taehyung everything he knew about _magic._

His gifts had grown more and more fierce as time went on. By the time Taehyung was fourteen he was performing magic most witches twice his age couldn't manage, but he had woefully bad control and so depended very much on Seokjin to help him keep it together. Seokjin made him pendants, bracelets and the like to help. But one afternoon Taehyung was in a particularly bad fit, having seen an aura that terrified him on his way home and Seokjin was at his parents, and Taehyung's mother and father had come home to find him weakly crying in the middle of his bedroom, wrapped up in a blanket with anything that had been loose on the floor or furniture spinning slowly around his head. It had taken him a moment to drop everything and he had just... Dropped it. Normally he tried to put everything back, but the spinning was meditative and helped him feel better and he'd just been so scared and—

They hadn't understood, his parents. Not at all, but the only change in their auras was the sickly green-gold of confusion and worry. They were worried _for_ him, as Taehyung cried that he was sorry, that he was sorry he was magic and he hadn't told them, that Seokjin was helping him and that was why he hung out with him so much, that he was scared he was losing control and everything was getting worse and it was getting harder to hide.

His mother had pulled him into her arms and kissed his head, pushed back his hair and rocked him like she always had since he was a tiny baby, singing under her breath until Taehyung's tears had run out and he was so, so tired. She tucked him into his bed, kissed his hands and face and promised that she loved him, her aura sparkling with magenta and Taehyung smiled a little, because he knew she did. Even without the visual proof, he knew she loved him. When his father came in the next morning he'd been a little less sure, but he'd sat beside the bed while Taehyung told him little anecdotes about going places with Seokjin like the big park and practicing lifting leaves and bringing flowers back to life. His father asked him if Seokjin had ever done anything _inappropriate_ and Taehyung had been so surprised that he'd blinked for a moment before shaking his head. _Never,_ he promised. _He's helping me with my magic, Dad. No one else can._

For the next eight months, Taehyung's parents try to come to terms with the fact that their son is a witch. It's hard for them. They love him very much, and he loves them, but they all know that the older he gets, even week to week, living in the city gets harder for him. He doesn't like walking alone, he can't be trusted to perform short errands because he's so easily distracted. He practices magic without ever thinking about it in coin tricks and street basketball and after a disastrous night of Taehyung running home in the dark from something that attacked him, something he'd described as a _pile of goo with a million eyeballs_ Seokjin convinces his parents that Taehyung needs to be somewhere less populated, somewhere more safe.

Taehyung promises to write them often. Promises that he loves them and that he'll write all the time and he does. He writes them every two weeks on the dot, about what he's learning, about what he and Seokjin are doing. He conveniently leaves out that on their first night in the house in the woods, he had climbed into Seokjin's lap and demanded his attention and Seokjin had finally, after months of Taehyung _pleading,_ caved and kissed him to sleep, laid in bed with him until morning. He also leaves out the first time they have sex, out in the greenhouse in the humid sunlight on the warm stone floor.

He leaves out his nightmares of darkness, being alone, and the thing with a million eyes.

But the nightmares are real, now.

With Seokjin pulled into the dark behind him Taehyung is alone and he can feel the world closing in on him, claustrophobic in it's depth and he squeezed his eyes closed, wails through clenched teeth, and collapses to the ground. Hoseok and Jimin keep walking and Taehyung feels it coming up from the ground, that thing with a million eyeballs, that thing he's fled from his entire life, the thing that's been watching him. It's so real now. It's real and it's tentacles are wrapping around his throat and squeezing and he is alone and cold in the dark.

“No,” he pants, struggling for his machetes, for anything to help him fight off the thing, the gelatinous, slippery thing that giggles like dead children when it lifts him from the ground. Just like it had that night in Roxbury it slithers up his legs and belly. It tries to worm over all his warm places and take away the color of his aura, his life. It wants to make him a cold, dead thing. “ _No._ ”

He gets a grip on one chain. Wraps it around his fist and swings blindly. The metal makes a burst of pain bloom over his knuckles but it drops him. The chains are made of silver and iron and magicked with some of the strongest spells Taehyung knows how to use; they are fierce and the blades at the end of them are sharp as he yanks up the other and lets them start to spin at his sides. They whistle sweetly, his little _mockingbirds._ He named them Huggin and Munnin before they left, asked Hoseok to bless them. They are shining now, shining as they twirl and force the thing to keep distance and scream. Taehyung whirls them around his body like a martial arts master, listens to them sing but he can't focus on attacking it, only on keeping himself safe as he can be. He can feel it edging closer, can feel the oppressive weight of it's aura bearing down on him.

 _Submit,_ it demands, and Taehyung, always in defiance, roars wordlessly. His familiar rises from the ground around his legs and Huggin and Munnin start to crackle with lightning, the sharp sting of ozone filling his lungs. Pikachu is hissing, spitting and snarling and Taehyung is doing all he can to just make sure that they make it out alive, that they can get to Seokjin—

_Seokjin—_

But when Taehyung reaches out with his mind Seokjin is not there. There is no soft pink aura, no prismatic shimmer and his roar turns to a scream and the lighting turns into a storm and the blackness envelops everything. The dark blue that has always ripped through his own aura glows fierce with red and gold and Taehyung. Sweet, soft Taehyung, becomes a creature of wind and fury and the blades in his hands cleave the earth.

 


	26. namjoon kim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Namjoon and Jackson kissed for the first time in May, when Jackson sweetly tanged their fingers and asked Namjoon to call him over the summer, asked if they could get together when Jackson got back from Los Angeles. They kissed and Namjoon very literally started to glow and it was only the bright sunlight that kept anyone from noticing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is short bc namjoon fought me every step of the way. shithead.

Namjoon Kim met Jackson Wang at college, and was so immediately smitten he's still a bit embarrassed about it. Jackson was, is, bright and exuberant, friendly and sincere. He had taken an interest in Jackson in their first year, when the two of them were rooming across the hall from one another and had spent more time out and about on the quad or in the library than they did in their respective rooms. They arranged to room together the next semester, and Namjoon didn't have to fake that he wasn't getting along with his roommate—a broad football player who didn't think much of the skinny philosophy major and wasn't quiet about it.

Namjoon and Jackson kissed for the first time in May, when Jackson sweetly tanged their fingers and asked Namjoon to call him over the summer, asked if they could get together when Jackson got back from Los Angeles. They kissed and Namjoon very literally started to glow and it was only the bright sunlight that kept anyone from noticing.

Jimin noticed.

He made merciless fun of Namjoon for the _entire summer,_ laughing at his embarrassment, at his fears that Jackson wouldn't want to room together in the fall, that he was just playing with him. He comforted Namjoon when his anxiety grew to a point of danger for himself and when Jackson came to visit—two weeks before school started, Jimin watched from the treeline as the short man _bounded_ up to Namjoon, threw his arms around his shoulders and kissed him with such fervor that Jimin had no idea why Namjoon had been so nervous in the first place.

They've been inseparable ever since.

Coming out as magic, as it were, had been... Easy. Jackson was a witch too, although a poor one. He could only work domestic spells, little things like healing small cuts or cleaning, which explained why his room was always meticulously neat even though he was a bit of a walking disaster. Jackson _loved_ Nyra, and Jimin, and Namjoon's parents (to whom he had properly introduced himself to as _Wang Jia Er_ ) and he loved that Namjoon picked up Mandarin like he'd been speaking it his entire life and he loved Namjoon.

That was the important part, the most important part. That he loved Namjoon.

It is Jackson that Namjoon thinks of now, as he stands his ground against the sphinx. He is Nyra and Nyra is him, together they are a beast and idly Namjoon wonders if Jackson would be afraid of them.

The sphinx yowls and screeches and slaps his face with one huge paw. The flat gold mask catches most of the damage, but in the tangle of flapping wings and scraping claws and stinging whips of their tail, the sphinx rips the mask from their face and bites from the bridge of their nose to their temple, crushing their eye. They scream and even though they can't see they fight on, because this is important, this is the world in their hands. It is not just Jackson, it is not just them and their friends on this mountaintop it is the world.

Namjoon knows what damage a Legion will do. What damage a Lord of Hell can do, though it's no Lord of Hell as in Christian mythology. That is just a simple explanation. What it _is_ is simply the personification of evil soaked into the earth down to the bowls of lava and molten metal. It is wickedness given form. If it is let loose it will wreak havoc; there are very strong witches on the east coast but there is no way a sudden attack would be without severe casualties and damage.

Namjoon has a moment of memory.

He recalls laying on the grass with his head in Jacksons lap as the two of them watch the sun rise up over the ocean. Perhaps it's cliché, but Namjoon loves to watch the sun come up. Jackson is bending down to kiss him, and he remembers this happening. He remembers that Jackson had kissed him, that he'd sat up and the two of them had made love in the grass beneath the trees on the beach, Namjoon's skin wet with sweat, Jackson's voice speaking hushed, frantic Mandarin against his lips.

He hears Jackson's voice now. But it is not warm with want or desire. It is cold and screaming and afraid and it knocks Namjoon off balance, just for a second. His heart rate spikes and fear pierces through him and the sphinx draws down one huge paw and knocks Nyra and Namjoon apart.

She is still the beast-cat but Namjoon is just a witch, small and powerless for a moment and he watches the creature's face contort in hideous glee as it stalks closer to him. Namjoon swallows, gets up on his knee. He can't feel his face, but he knows his left eye is completely crushed. He can feel... Something oozing down his cheek. He raises his hands.

On his right is the ring the house gave him. It glows dark green and is warm around his finger. On the left is the ring Jackson gave him just a few weeks ago. He hasn't even told Jimin yet, though he's sure Jimin noticed the little black-and-clear flash of diamond set into white gold. It's just a ring, the metal cool in the icy wind whipping around them but it is this ring Namjoon pushes all his power to. It is the ring on his left hand, the one Jackson helped to make, the one he'd kissed when he put it on Namjoon's finger three weeks ago and asked him if he was maybe, maybe okay with getting married, someday. Maybe.

It is this ring Jackson has spelled and blessed and Namjoon lets that blessing wash over him like warm water. He feels, for one brief moment, the utter truth and warmth of Jackson's love for him. Feels it surround him in white light like the petals of mayflowers.

 _I'm not really good at a lot of magic,_ Jackson had once confessed. _But there's a reason I'm in school for botany._

The earth erupts under Namjoon. Vines and tangles of thorns, red-and-white roses and the ferocity of love unkempt and messy and fearsome and Namjoon feels a flower blossoming where his left eye used to be.

It is a red camellia. _You are a fire in my heart._ He can almost hear Jackson's voice, can almost feel his hands on either side of his face as the vines and thorns wrap around the sphinx like a true Devil's Knot and squeeze. Squeeze and _burn._

Jackson had looked so happy when Namjoon whispered _yes, of course_ against his mouth. So relieved, like he'd been really afraid Namjoon would say no. It's only been three weeks, and Namjoon isn't going to give up without a fight. He's going to go home to Jackson. He's going to get married to Wang Jia Er, and they're going to live in a big house in California where they can watch the sun set on the water, where the plants bloom year round.

He's going to make it.

He's going to.

The flames envelop him and he hears Nyra scream as his hands turn palm-out in an aggressive motion. Feels her behind him, sliding back inside of him and offering her strength to him.

With a red camellia where his eye used to be and his body in the shape of the Dread Lioness, Namjoon Kim bares his teeth and _roars._

 


	27. seokjin kim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's never gone this far after his mother closed it off. He feels his elongated neck, his sharp fingers. A _beldam_ is a very specific type of witch, you see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...spiders. driders, if you know what that is. seokjin is a drider.  
>  (most of the imagery is pretty vague; don't look up _drider_ unless you aren't an arachnophobe of any kind.)  
>  a _beldam_ is just a malicious old witch or hag, but i use the term for the type of witch that would, usually, be forced out of "polite society" due to physical deformity.

Seokjin Kim has been hearing the same thing since he was a small child. That he's special, that he's an exception, that he's going to be the one to revive their families reputation for power and fear. All his life he's been told these things and all his life he hasn't believed a word of it.

Not when he is six and handling water, not when he is eight and handling fire. Not when he is eleven and carving intricate pendants by levitating them in the left hand while wand-working in the right. He just wants to be himself, not some kind of last scion of his family. Magic doesn't pick and choose who receives it, it simply works under the chaos theory and does what it wishes. It isn't his fault that none of his older siblings have a quarter of his skill. It isn't his fault that they hate him, that they think he is unworthy, or some other stupid thing.

It also isn't his fault that there are whispers about his heritage and his mother's communion with eldritch creatures that granted her son strange and magnificent powers unnatural to the world as it existed. He just wants to be left alone and it's the one thing no one will ever give him. He can charm his way into anything else except this one thing.

He's never believed he is special. Not until he meets Taehyung in a McDonalds and feels the radiation of his magic like heat shimmering on tarmac. At fifteen, Seokjin meets Taehyung and his entire world changes, tilts and shifts.

Suddenly, he has someone to help, someone to teach. Taehyung is incredibly powerful but has no control over himself at all, no idea of how he is to work his talents and that is what Seokjin helps him with. Helps him deal with the overstimulation living in Boston caused him, helps him shape his magic into forms. He wipes Taehyung's tears when he is frightened, he kisses his hair when he can't sleep.

Taehyung's parents find out eventually, of course. It couldn't have been avoided forever. Luckily, they don't think Seokjin is doing anything _untoward_ with their son; they even come to meet Seokjin's parents to confirm all his stories.

But Taehyung is getting worse and worse and one day, after Taehyung is in absolute fits over his recurrent nightmare hallucination of something gelatinous with a million eyes, Seokjin gently puts forth that Taehyung might be better away from the city. It takes a while to convince Taehyung's parents, but eventually they concede, and Seokjin takes Taehyung up to the mountains, to the house that has been waiting for him for what feels like his entire adult life.

The house welcomes them with great warmth, though Seokjin has to bully her into creating two separate bedrooms. That first night, Taehyung sits in Seokjin's lap in the big chair in the living room and demands his attention, demands a kiss, demands...

Seokjin gives him everything he asks for. Three year age difference or not, there's only so much wear a person can take when they are so attracted to someone. Taehyung's electricity, the brightness of his being, is everything Seokjin has ever wanted: enveloping, tight and perfect.

They spend six years at the house and over the course of those six years, many things happen. Taehyung forms a familiar. They both meet Namjoon, who is in the area for research into the local lore. They fall further and further into love like they've launched themselves into a bottomless pit.

One terrible afternoon, the two of them go to inspect the Devils Headstone. It's strange that a place should be so avoided by the local mundies, that a place should _feel_ so evil, but Seokjin has forgotten about how easily Taehyung is swayed by the creatures around him. He's forgotten and so hadn't thought to give him any protection before they left.

Something at that place _takes_ Taehyung.

One moment he is there, himself, calm and brown-haired and tanned and the next moment he is something else altogether: something horrible, something _evil._ His eyes, red and white, his lips stretched back like someone had split the skin of his cheeks. His jaw, elongated and his teeth sharp, a long red tongue lolling out down his chest.

The shadows of eyes all over his bare skin.

Seokjin screams in fear and it moves like wind over the mountain: knocks Taehyung, or what is inside Taehyung, into a huge oak tree and Seokjin considers, for a terrified moment, leaving him there.

But then he thinks of Taehyung waking alone in this evil place and drags his unconscious body into the back of the truck.

They pas through the gates and when Seokjin pulls down the tailgate, Taehyung is exhausted and confused, staggering as Seokjin pulls him out and then into the house. Taehyung clings to him in terror and shivers until the sun comes up. Only then does he sleep.

Seokjin makes a pendant for him. It is intricate, formed of crystal, and he never goes anywhere without it. Never. Which is how Seokjin knows that it is not Taehyung in front of him now. How he knows that it is not Taehyung standing there in front of him, twirling his machetes and grinning that evil grin.

 _Hello lover,_ it says, and Seokjin bares his teeth.

“Fuck off,” he snarls, readying his wand and whip, giving it a hard _snap._ It cuts into the thing that is not Taehyung, makes blood stream down his cheek. The whip is spelled: maximum damage for minimum effort, but Seokjin doesn't fool himself into thinking that's the last of it. The thing is clearly more powerful than he is. It is clearly more evil than he's ever thought he'd be able to comprehend, but he doesn't care. How _dare_ it take Taehyung's form, how dare it emulate that sunshine child with it's wicked, twisted magic.

He snaps the whip again, raises the wand in the same motion and the whip flares with white fire, unbelievably strong fire. Seokjin has been wielding fire and water longer than anything else and he knows how to use it.

Still the creature grabs the whip. Still it burns itself by yanking Seokjin to it and Seokjin holds out the wand with one hand and breathes a spell of ice and fire, lets it wrap around himself like a tornado. It won't save him, but perhaps it will cause more damage than anything else he can do while the thing is yanking his whip from his hand and turning it back on him.

Luckily the magic in the whip can't be used against him, but it still hurts. It still _hurts_ and he cries out when it hits against his chest—his arm, his neck. It raises terrible red welts and it strikes him over and over and over. It hurts, but it won't kill him. Somehow he gets the impression that it wasn't expecting a fight from him. It hadn't been expecting him to resist, as he had turned to it willingly, and Seokjin has to laugh at the stupidity of it. True evil is one of the worst things on the planet, but worse is the knowledge that it is unfocused and acting on pure instinct, likely to free itself. It has nothing to lose, and Seokjin... He has everything to lose.

His parents, his siblings, the old brick house in Boston, the house in the woods. The touch of the water at the beach and summer night bonfires, Namjoon tripping over the tree roots and Taehyung. He has so much to lose. But he has to fight like he has nothing.

He slowly takes the wand in hand. Unwraps the twine that acts as a barrier. Knotted twine. His mother learned this trick from a withered old hag in Florida when he was born, and she taught it to him. This is the wand made at his birth, it is very special. Very powerful. He slowly unties the twine from the wand and undoes the first knot. There is a wave across him, something cool and sparkling.

He unties the second knot. There is heat and the crackle of burning wood.

The third. All is snow and ice.

Fourth. Spiders and needles and sewing thread. Eyes that show him every angle of viewing, bright and burning. He's never gone this far after his mother closed it off. He feels his elongated neck, his sharp fingers. A _beldam_ is a very specific type of witch, you see. It's rare that they are male. Rarer still that the hideousness of their true power does not permanently warp their bodies beyond recognition, forcing them into the lives of hermits in deep woods and tall mountains. But Seokjin is the pride of his family. He is special.

Seokjin feels his legs split apart. He feels his mouth rip and his torso pull up. On eight legs he shifts, pierces, and winds new whips from silk like sharp steel. The beautiful, comforting pink of his aura gives way to forest green and gold and black.

Seokjin only hopes that Taehyung won't be able to see him, from wherever he is. He doesn't like spiders, and Seokjin has never told him. Never told him what happens when he unties the knots and lets loose the power he restricts; the delicate and terrifying form of a creature that is half-spider, half-man and all monster. He hasn't looked like this he was a fat little child of four or five, and the form had still been... Cute, somehow. Chubby-legged and colorful like a pokemon, only real. His mother had knotted the twine, tucked the wand away, and her son has lived like a human for his entire life, even though that is not... What he is.

He gives a terrible, rasping hiss and lets the whips strike out. They knock the leather from Not-Taehyung's hands, and Seokjin thinks to whisper a prayer to whatever horror aided his mother in giving birth to him, a terrible eight-legged, eight-eyed child. He prays for power, for strength, and for victory. If his monstrous father can grant him that...

Then he will be happy. He will even give his life for it.

 _Come and get me,_ he snarls, no longer able to speak in a human tongue. _Come and try._

 


	28. sanghyuk han

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Han Sanghyuk isn't afraid of a Jersey Devil. He knows he should be: he knows he should be terrified, facing off against such an awful opponent armed with nothing but a blessed staff and his own strength, but Sanghyuk didn't become the best hunter on the eastern seaboard by being afraid. Sanghyuk is never afraid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sanghyuk fought me for every inch of this and i hate him.

Han Sanghyuk isn't afraid of a Jersey Devil. He knows he should be: he knows he should be terrified, facing off against such an awful opponent armed with nothing but a blessed staff and his own strength, but Sanghyuk didn't become the best hunter on the eastern seaboard by being afraid. Sanghyuk is never afraid.

Not even when he is fourteen and standing at a crossroads on the Pine Barrens, where people have told him not to go. He stands there above a freshly dug hole into which he's dropped a tin box, staring down a man with black eyes and hair that smokes like he's on fire.

 _Is that all,_ he asks, and Sanghyuk—eyes wet and chest hurting and so full of sadness it ripples off him in waves, nods. _Deal._ They shake hands. Then the demon is gone and Sanghyuk is left at the crossroads alone while the ache slowly bleeds from him like poison.

Marie doesn't want to date him anymore? That's fine. His parents are getting divorced and it's his fault? He feels guilty, but not heartbroken. He walks through the trees, idly picks up a large oak stick and swings it back and forth as he heads towards home.

A horrifying screech halts his walk. He sees through the trees something tall as a clydesdale and then it's weaving through the trees, screaming, frothing at the mouth and baring horrible teeth and Sanghyuk—he does what he always does when something is coming at him:

He swings.

The oak stick swings with the force of a baseball bat and all the strength he has in him. The thing lets out a blood-curdling shriek and falls to the ground, head mostly caved in. It's wings flap weakly and it yelps, yips and whines and Sanghyuk knows he should be running, he should be... Screaming, or freaking out, or even feeling bad for the pathetic, writhing thing on the forest floor.

But instead he raises the stick again, takes aim, and swings one more time—bringing it down with enough force to break the thing's neck. It stops moving. It's wings stop fluttering, it stops it's pathetic crying, and Sanghyuk crouches in the moonlight to get a better look at what he's just killed. He doesn't believe in all that occult, supernatural shit, but there it is: a goddamned jersey devil, just like the stories.

He takes his knife from his pocket (no smart kid goes anywhere without a knife, these days: who knows what weirdos are out trying to abduct people) and gives it a few pokes. It is quite dead, and he runs his fingers over the body in something like reverence. It's an ugly thing, goatish and bipedal, winged and clawed, but...

He pulls out a few of it's feathers. Even if he took pictures, no one would believe him so he doesn't bother with that. He just takes a few feathers and, after some consideration, exerts some strength to pull off a broken piece of skull that holds a long, curved horn. He stares down at the brain wobbling inside the skull, but he isn't sick.

He just holds his oak stick and walks home in the moonlight, holding a curved rams horn, a few long feathers, and not feeling anything at all.

~

It's not that the deal renders him unable to feel _anything._ He can still feel things. Possessiveness, lust, anger. He just can't _love_ anything. He can't feel the warm radiance of affection in his chest, even when he knows he wants to, and should. He feels it's absence very sharply as he looks down at Jeongguk Jeon, Little Jonny South, in the bed they just fucked in. He's.... He's sad, that he can't feel it. Jonny is tucked in to him, all skinny legs and stringy hair and Sanghyuk bends to place a kiss on his forehead but it doesn't have the power to protect him. It can't: Sanghyuk isn't capable of that kind of magic, the kind of magic all mundies are able to perform. He traded it away for nothing.

~

He'd heard of Little Jonny South before he sees him. Heard rumors of him around the trading post in Virginia, some mixed blood mulatto-asian with too much magic and an expression too serious for his pretty face. But no rumors have prepared Sanghyuk for actually seeing him. He is hunched and skinny and absolutely stunning, with broad shoulders and dark, wild hair. He wears too much jewelry, Sanghyuk can tell that even from behind. His skin shimmers and he smokes a cigarillo as he sits on the back porch and stares out into the trees and says nothing to anyone. _Houngan,_ they call him, a voodoo priest, and when Sanghyuk approaches him he sees for a moment a tall woman, pale and dark-haired, glaring at him.

Then she is gone, and he doesn't break his stride as he moves to sit beside Little Jonny South and only when he says, “I hear you're looking for a partner,” does the boy turn to look at him.

His eyes are huge, round and a brown so dark they remind Sanghyuk of the trees in the Pine Barrens in the dark of noon-day when the sun won't pierce the canopy of needles. He's fucking beautiful, and Sanghyuk gives him a level look even as the boy blows out smoke through his nose and teeth.

“Where'dya hear that,” he asks, and his voice is high and sweet.

“Around,” Sanghyuk shrugs. “Look. If what y'need is brawn, I'm lookin' for a brain. We can try it if y'like. I gotta case down in Georgia needs more brains than I have. I'll pay you if you come. Put you up n'shit.”

“I ain't got nothin' better t'do,” Little Jonny South replies, offering one hand. “Jeongguk Jeon,” he says.

“Sanghyuk Han,” Sanghyuk says.

The rest, as they say, is history.

~

Jeongguk is fiery, passionate and strong. He commands the hoards of his little shadow beasties leant to him by loa with ferocity and determination and he's the best partner Sanghyuk has ever had on a case, so it relieves him when Jeongguk makes casual mention that they're a pretty good team, and maybe they should stick together.

They do.

For months they stick together and then, one night in a dark hotel room after a triumphant hunt, both of them are tipsy and laughing and Jeongguk leans in (god he's grown so much) and kisses Sanghyuk hotly on the mouth.

Sanghyuk drags him in hard and the two of them tear at one another—rip away clothes and claw skin, bite at each other and laugh at shouts of pain and pleasure. Sanghyuk finally gets Jeongguk onto his back and fucks him, enjoys how he strains and moans and writhes beneath him. He's enchanted by the gold-and-teal glimmer of his skin, by the sound of his gasps, by the way Jeongguk's hands hold on to his shoulders. He lets Jeongguk climb up into his lap and rock against him, he lets Jeongguk kiss him until his lips hurt and Sanghyuk knows that if he could feel it, god—he'd be so in love, right now. With Jeongguk's sweaty skin and the taste of his tongue like sweet apricot brandy and ginger beer, with the way Jeongguk clutches so desperately to him when he starts to cum, eyes rolling, head thrown back as his legs clamp and his nails dig furrows into Sanghyuk's skin.

Sanghyuk knows that if he could feel it, he'd feel the sensation of falling in love and he hates that he can't, because when they're done—when he's exhausted himself because they've fucked so long his balls hurt, his muscles ache and his head throbs—Jeongguk burrows in close to him. He presses his cheek to Sanghyuk's chest and hugs him and Sanghyuk... God.

God, he wishes more than anything he'd never traded away his love for nothing.

~

Sanghyuk has never been afraid of a monster. Never. Not wendigo, not possessed bears or cougars, not jersey devils or bakeneko or chimeras. All those things are physical. All those things can be killed, and he's not scared of them. He's not even really all that afraid of ghosts or demons, vampires or werewolves. He knows a few decent examples of all those things.

Sanghyuk is twenty-two and he's not scared of anything but this:

He stands with his blessed staff, chest heaving from all the strength he's exerted to break the neck of his attacker, and he watches in horror as it melts away, becomes smaller. Thinner. Human.

Jeongguk.

Sanghyuk drops his staff and stares and tries to remember how to breathe because Jeongguk, that's Jeongguk on the ground with his head cracked open and his neck snapped sideways. He's wearing the bracelet Sanghyuk gave him when they went to New Mexico, made of Native silver and turquoise, blessed by the Comanche shaman he'd purchased it from, quietly, out near the bluffs. _To protect the one you love,_ the old man had said, eying Sanghyuk very critically. _Or the one you would love, if you could._

But Jeongguk lays there dead on the ground and all of Sanghyuks' breath leaves him.

 _Ahh,_ something behind him laughs terribly, and he can't bring himself to turn around. _So you do have a weakness, Han. Who'd have thought you'd be stupid enough to put so much of yourself in someone else?_

“Shut up,” he pants, terrified.

 _Look what you did,_ it hisses. _Look what you've done, cracked him right in half, haven't you. Ruined him. You killed him._

“No,”

_You killed him._

“No,” Sanghyuk is shaking. He knows, he _knows_ that can't be Jeongguk's body, it can't be. It can't. Jeongguk was tugged into the darkness, he can't be here. He can't. But Sanghyuk knows what magic can do to a person. What kind of illusions it weaves and what kind of tortures it can concoct. “No, he ain't dead. He ain't.”

A rush of cold air comes up behind him and Sanghyuk grits his teeth, hisses for breath. He feels wet, sharp teeth on his throat. _You killed him. You've been killing him since you fucked him on that hotel bed and never told him you can't love him, you fucking miserable cunt. It's a mercy, you breaking his neck. He'll never know why you didn't love him._

“I _love him—_ ”

Sanghyuk turns to face his opponent, but the only person standing there is Jeongguk. Tall and thin and smiling, his funny teeth and triangle smile, his dark hair and his necklaces. “No,” Jeongguk says sweetly, reaching out to cup his face in both hands. “You don't. You can't, remember?”

He shivers and trembles and feels his eyes water. Those hands are so warm, so comforting on his face, thumbing his jaw, running through his hair before they come to rest on his neck. The hands of the man he would love if he could grip tight, then jerk hard to one side.

Sanghyuk's body hits the ground with a dull thump.

 


	29. jeongguk jeon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Jeongguk was twelve, the Baron Samedi reached out a hand and Jeongguk had taken it, because he was afraid, because he was small and terrified and alone. And through him, the Baron worked his magic. Through him, Erzulie Freda tastes the world she loves and they grant him great power.
> 
> All power comes with a price.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is FUCKING SHORT bc jeongguk is the tightest lipped little bitch ever and i hate him. worse than hyuk and namjoon combined.

“Go, Hyuk. Please?”

Jeongguk Jeon, little Jonny South, is dragged into the dark by the _Baron Kriminel,_ the murderer. He hears Erzulie Freda screeching in impotent rage, feels his arms yanked back and his body wrestled against an oak tree. He remembers being a kid, being beat up for being so different—for having an asian father and a mulatto-asian mother, for having wide eyes that saw so much. He used to get hurt all the time. When he was eleven, a group of boys from school wrapped a rope around his neck and tried to hang him from a tree out in the swamp, because he was _bad magic._ He'd fought and kicked and screamed so loud that the earth itself seemed to shake and they ran away, leaving Jeongguk on the ground, choking and coughing and crying, his pants wetted, his hands shaking.

 _Oh, baby,_ his mother had cooed, tugging him up into her lap. His father was long dead, but his mother, with her brown skin and dark hair, always loved him so desperately. _Oh, baby I'm so sorry. It's all right now, I'm here._

She wasn't there for much longer. She got sick. Sick with something even she couldn't cure and as Jeongguk held her hand she died, with the early morning sun kissing the tops of the trees. Jeongguk was alone.

He dragged her out to the firepit, already full of wood and kindling. She'd known she was going to die, and tried so hard to keep it from her son. He had just turned twelve. He'd just turned twelve and he burned his mother's body to ashes while he sobbed and choked and wailed, alone and afraid like he always was.

But across from the fire stood a man in dark clothes. A man in a black waistcoat with his face like a skull and yet somehow Jeongguk wasn't afraid. He had nothing to be afraid of, not from that man. There were others like him he should fear, but not this man, who came to ferry his mother's beautiful soul away to the afterlife because she'd been a voodoo mambo, and she was worthy of his personal attention. Her son was worthy of his attention.

When Jeongguk was twelve, the Baron Samedi reached out a hand and Jeongguk had taken it, because he was afraid, because he was small and terrified and alone. And through him, the Baron worked his magic. Through him, Erzulie Freda tastes the world she loves and they grant him great power.

All power comes with a price.

Sometimes he wonders if his price is loving Sanghyuk, who does not love him. He wonders if the price is being pinned under Sanghyuk, feeling his mouth on his throat and his cock inside of him and knowing that he'll never love Jeongguk the way Jeongguk loves him. If it's clinging onto Sanghyuk while Erzulie Freda rides him, wondering if Sanghyuk would love him if he was a woman, instead.

His heart breaks a little more every time.

But now, the Baron _Kriminel_ grins at him like a murder in a graveyard and Jeongguk bares his teeth. Erzulie Freda is trying to push through, to mount him completely but she is unable. She can't reach through him, not when _Kriminel_ holds him so tight, when the beast is yanking a noose around his neck. Jeongguk's fingers rip into the space between his throat and the rope but the rope is a snake with a thousand heads and they bite his arms, his face. He can't find his grip.

“Let go,” he chokes, feeling his eyes starting to cross. “You let go, I ain't done nothin. I ain't done nothin.”

The Baron _Kriminel_ looks genuinely sorry, for a moment. He looks so human to Jeongguk's trained eye and Jeongguk takes a chance, because what does he have if not his bravery and fearlessness. Sanghyuk would hate him.

Sanghyuk is gone.

“I ain't done nothin, Lord,” he gasps out. Offers his hand. “You kn-know this ain't, ain't how it goes you, you know you ain't supposed to judge who ain't done wrong—”

“You is right about that, _piti prèt_ ,” the loa murmurs, his dark violet and black waistcoat clinging tight to his spiderlike form. “But what, pray, are you going to give me for letting you live.”

“Blood,” Jeongguk can feel his brain starting to turn off. “Bl, Blood and flesh, Lord, as you choose. On _Fete Ghede._ ”

“Your blood and flesh, _ti kras yon sèl,_ ” the Baron says, baring his tombstone teeth. “I want none but yours.”

“Not,” Jeongguk's tongue is swelling. “Not my life.”

“ _Non,_ ” the Baron replies, even as he cuts Jeongguk down from the noose, standing so hideously tall as he looks down at him. “Not your life. What good are you to me, if you are in the ground and protected by _Cimitière_? You're no good to me dead, _piti prèt._ Do we have a deal?”

Jeongguk feels Erzulie Freda screaming. He feels her trying to envelop him, to keep him safe, and he offers out one thin and shaking hand.

Erzulie Freda knocks it away before _Kriminel_ has a chance to touch it. She screeches and digs her nails into _Kriminel's_ eyes, her sheer force of will throwing him from the plain of human life. He will come back, Jeongguk knows this, but for now he just... looks at her. Looks at Erzulie Freda, who chose him among all of those she could have chosen. She shimmers, gold and teal and so breathtakingly beautiful. She reminds Jeongguk, like she always does, of his half-blood mother and he lets himself be dragged close to her, knowing that her physical form won't last long. She speaks in babbled French and Haitian Creole, smoothing his hair, rocking him back and forth. Jeongguk understands most of what she says, before his consciousness drops off.

_No, no he cannot have you, he cannot have you my boy, my sweet boy, no. I will protect you, I will keep you safe, that boy you love will keep you safe, I won't let him hurt you. I won't let him hurt you._

_It's all right, Jonny._

_It's all right now._

 

 


	30. the end

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hello,” he says, and his voice is soft. “Who are you?”  
> “Hoseok,” he says easily.  
> “Oh,” the boy says. “Oh, I... I thought you were someone else.”  
> “Who did you think I was?”  
> The boy laughs, but there are tears on his face. “God,” he replies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this... is a mess omg

Hoseok sees them first. The boys. Men. One of them is short and pale, the other is tall and covered in inky black spots like a tarnish on his soul. He knows that it is the effect of the Maw—that is the one who has been housing the beast, unintentionally holding it at bay. He wonders what the boy sees, because he's screaming in fear and sobbing, struggling against nothing visible.

Hoseok knows he is to stop at the first boy. The one standing still and unmoving, expressionless and empty. His soul has been separated from his body, and Hoseok cannot see it through all the black wickedness. Jimin keeps walking, doesn't let go of his hand until he has to. Then he cannot see Jimin at all and he is left alone with the empty boy with empty eyes and a little silver cross hanging around his neck in a mockery of faith. His wrists are tightly bandaged.

“Hello,” he says, and his voice is soft. “Who are you?”

“Hoseok,” he says easily.

“Oh,” the boy says. “Oh, I... I thought you were someone else.”

“Who did you think I was?”

The boy laughs, but there are tears on his face. “God,” he replies. “I thought you might be God. But that's stupid, right? God is dead. Or... Or he forgot me, I guess. Doesn't want me. I'm a fag, y'know.”

 _Oh._ Hoseok feels so stupid for not thinking of this before. The boy has been existing in a place where God cannot touch; a Maw is too dark for even Gods light to pierce, and so Hoseok grips his implement tightly. _Father in Heaven,_ he implores. _Please. This boy needs you now. Please come to him._

It feels like... Warm water flowing over him. True possession by God is impossible, but Hoseok knows that he is as full of light, of faith as he can be. He is shining like the sun.

“Yoongi,” God speaks through his mouth. “Yoongi. My son. I have not forgotten you.”

“You did,” Yoongi cries out and it is the cry of a child, left alone and afraid and Hoseok wonders how long it's been since the evil took hold of this place—how long it's been since Yoongi felt the light of God on his face, felt the warm and intrinsic knowledge of faith in his chest. “You did, how dare you—how dare you come here, you, you _abandoned me,_ ” he shrieks but to Hoseok's ear it sounds more like a sob. “I _needed you,_ I called for you so much, for so long and you _abandoned me._ ”

Hoseok steps closer and a pulse of magic comes off of Yoongi—so heavy and cosmic, so dreadfully powerful but _choked,_ somehow. Like something is struggling for life and is using the last of it's strength to attempt breaking free.

“I lost you,” God speaks softly and keeps walking, clearly knowing what's going on, though he doesn't see fit to let Hoseok know. “When you came to this place, and this thing stepped between us I could not find you. It hid you from me, Yoongi. I would never abandon you. Did you not sing so beautifully for me on Sunday mornings? Did you not pray for perfect pitch so that I may hear you sing with the angels?”

Yoongi sobs wretchedly and when Hoseok is close enough he embraces him, burning with holy fire. Yoongi wiggles, writhes, tries to squirm away. Something ugly is trying to bubble up through him and God simply pushes it down. He fills Yoongi with the Light and the Love and leaves no room for anything else, no wicked thing to take him.

But a scream makes Yoongi still in fear and Hoseok feels God slip away, is left only holding his implement and watching in horror as Jimin, sweet Jimin, raises his fist in the call for the Hunt. There is an ugly thing before him, black and wicked and it bears the horns of a bull moose, a long red tongue, needlesharp teeth.

“Hongbin!! Hongbin— _no—_ ” Yoongi is screaming and fighting his grip, still glowing with holy light, the bandages around his wrists slowly burning away. Hoseok holds Yoongi tight against his body, his staff braced across the mans belly as Jimin's spirit grapples with that of the wretched figure of what had once been Hongbin Lee but is now a vessel, an avatar of an unholy, primordial filth far older than the legends of the Abenaki tribes, or any race of humans. It is ugly and vast and evil. And Yoongi screams.

Hoseok can hear the Hunt coming and can think only to pray that it differentiates between friend and foe. Yoongi is truly fighting against his hold now. Now that the vision of the Hunt is coming up through the miasma, the forms of huge animals, mythological and earthbound and real, all real. They rush in like waves, like smoke.

“No, don't hurt him, please don't please don't hurt him no—no _please—”_ Yoongi's voice is abruptly cut off when Hongbin—or whatever is left of him—manages to fight his way to the surface of the creature possessing his body to look at Yoongi with a gaze so full of adoration that Hoseok looks away. He cannot bear to witness it. Not when he knows what destruction is coming, not when that third eye is bloodshot and rolling up in his head so terribly.

“Yoongi?” Hongbin whispers, and the sound carries in the unnatural stillness of the moment before the fall of death. “Yoongi. Baby, I love you,” Hongbin says, and instead of fighting Jimin's hoards, instead of battling the Hunt he closes his eyes and lets it overtake him. The roars of boars and bears, of horned rams, the howls of wolves and the screaming of loons and whippoorwills. It is a sound not of this world, and it terrifies Hoseok as it does every time Jimin lets it loose but it is made worse by the wretched scream of the thing that tries to scramble out of Hongbin's body only to be forced under the hooves of the Hunt. It tramples over them as Hoseok drags Yoongi with him to the ground, trying to cover his body, trying to keep him from seeing the terrible damage he knows the Hunt is doing. It is not a good magic. It is not a kind one. It merely is, and does not care for who it is unleashed upon.

Yoongi keeps screaming and screaming. The world closes around them and when the Hunt fades Jimin stands victorious but weeping as Hongbin—his corpse?—hits the ground. There is no force in any world that can hold Yoongi from going to him, and Hoseok watches in wretched, reverent silence as Yoongi scrambles over the dark clay towards him, sobbing, his agony inhuman and eternal.

~

All around them is the deafening noise of the earth stopping, just for an instant. Yoongi's screaming has broken into weeping and somehow put a hush over the mountain and Hoseok sees in the corner of his vision a huge black rabbit. She is the size of a car. She hops to Yoongi, soundless as he cradles Hongbin's body and wails, the sound animal and desperate. There are no words being said. Only pure human misery. It pulses in waves like heat, and it is only when Jimin staggers that Hoseok realizes what's happening.

“Jimin,” he calls, terrified. “ _Jimin,_ get away!”

But Jimin isn't moving. Jimin is still as stone, trembling, and Hoseok runs to him, grabs his hand. “ _Jimin!_ ” he cries, and Jimin doesn't move. He just... Stares. Hoseok turns to look, feels his throat pull tight and calls his implement to him from where he left it on the ground.

It arrives just in time. It hits his hand and the power of God flows through him. It encircles him and Jimin, crouched low on the ground as the wraps around Yoongi's wrists finally burn away. The metal of Yoongi's odd iron bracelets melts. Hoseok watches in horror, with Jimin safe against his chest, as Yoongi reaches to touch the rabbit and the rabbit, large and cosmic and _powerful,_ pushes its nose to Yoongi's hand.

No, not iron. Something else. Something much, much more.

As what had once been metal drips down Yoongi's hands like water, it seems like sunlight is rushing through him, like something he's swallowed has come back out again. He might have burst into flame but Hoseok can only see that he is enveloped in light that licks at the corners of his mouth and the strands of his hair, threading beneath his human skin. All is light and then there is nothing but flames, and stillness, and weeping.

All around them the illusion crumbles. All around them the trailer park, the town, the trees all disappear and leave them on hard clay, bald as the ground at the Devil's Headstone. All around them is a ring of white birch trees, their leaves mockingly yellow and shivering in the wind. The ring stretches around as far as Hoseok's eyes can see and inside of it there is nothing but them. Nothing but Yoongi on his knees and wailing, clinging Hongbin's desecrated corpse to his chest and burning with magic so strong it steals the breath away from the pair behind the shield.

“No,” Yoongi is crying, over and over and over. “No, no no it's not true, make, no, undo it, undo it please, please I need—you can't _do this,_ please, I need him, I love him please make it not _true,_ ” and Hoseok knows that he is speaking to God at that moment. God as a little child knows him, God as the good and loving Father beyond the reach of the sky, who would do anything for the happiness of his children.

“Please,” it is a pathetic hiccup, and Yoongi turns the ruins of Hongbin's face up, cups his cheek and kisses the pulpy mess of gore. Presses his cheek to it and weeps, oh, he weeps. “Hongbin,” he mewls like a kicked kitten, rocking back and forth, holding what remains of his loved one against his chest. “Bean. No. Please, please wake up, baby please, Hongbin don't leave me, _please._ ”

Beside Hoseok, Jimin weeps also. Huge, gulping tears and apologies as he rips at the ground with his nails and fumbles, clumsy, for the rack of his antlers. His hands shake too much to pull them onto his head and Hoseok tries to help.

When they slide on Jimin becomes a stag. Breathing heavily, panting, staggering onto all four legs and walking, slowly, toward Yoongi. There are some things that are outside God's power to give. But there are some things Jimin _can_ give, as a servant to the Mother Earth. There are some thing he will always give _._

He stands beside Yoongi. Bends his head to the large rabbit, who stares back at him with eyes like stars. Then she is fading, becoming small, and Jimin is nudging his nose against Yoongi's shoulder and cheek, his chin and Hongbin's ruined face.

Yoongi stares at him, a mess of blood and snot and saliva and tears. Hoseok can't see what's happening but he knows, as the ground slowly springs back to life under Jimin's cloven hooves, that a miracle has occurred. He is filled with the warm light of God, refracting through him like he is a prism and he feels.. Oh, Lord he feels made anew, feels his wounds healing, the ground beneath him turning to soft moss and mayflowers and small, sweet saplings. He feels the evil being bled from the place and, as he stands, he points the end of his implement to the Devils Headstone at the instruction of God and takes a deep breath.

It shatters, and the last of the evil dissipates into nothing. It shatters, and he hears bodies hit the ground behind him. He is afraid to look. He doesn't want to turn back and see the corpses of his friends, maimed by the evil, ruined by it's power.

“Sweet _fuck,_ ” comes Wonsik's voice, weak and rough. “That fuckin' _hurts._ ” Then Namjoon grunts out a laugh which is terribly wet, and Nyra rubs her head on Hoseok's leg to get his attention. He turns away from Jimin, from Yoongi and Hongbin to face the bodies spread on the ground.

Wonsik is on his back, splayed. His arms and legs are shattered, clothes soaked with blood, elbows and knees bent strangely. It must be adrenaline and nothing else keeping him from realizing. Hoseok nudges his implement toward him and watches with relief as Wonsik's limbs bend back into their proper shapes. As his fingers snap into straight joints and his chest raises where its been collapsed. He laughs, though, as Frost sits on top of him and purrs maddeningly loud, rubs his head into Wonsik's chin insistently. “Hey buddy,” he croaks, reaching up to stroke his head. “Yeah, I know. Thanks.”

Hoseok turns to Namjoon, laying on his belly. He is not injured so much as he is exhausted, though there is a strange pink hue around one eye, that now seems more red than brown. But it only takes a moment for him to be revitalized, to feel less like a corpse put through the wringer. “Holy shit,” he says, his throat raw and covered in vicious bruises. Those, Hoseok cannot heal. His body can't take the strain of too many more miracles. “Did. Did we make it?”

“Looks like it,” Hoseok says, turning to Seokjin and Taehyung, who are clinging to one another, teary and close. They are healing one another, it seems, and whispering sweetly under their breath between kisses and it warms him all the way through to see. Seokjin's body seems... different. Like it's been laid over the truth of something else, but he is breathing, alive, and holding on to Taehyung tight enough that Taehyung's happy laughing is a bit strangled.

Then... Sanghyuk. And Jeongguk.

Jeongguk is in much the same position as Yoongi is, holding Sanghyuk's body to him. The tall man is unmoving, pale and when Jeongguk shakes Hoseok can see that his head is bobbing unnaturally, horrific bruises spread across his throat from collarbones to ears. His neck has been snapped by some terrific strength. His arms and chest are splattered with blood and gore, tufts of feather and fur and on his upper arm is the distinctive bite mark of a Jersey Devil, like a dogbite but deeper. Wider. Jeongguk doesn't cry as Yoongi does. It is soundless and still. Around him Hoseok can see Erzulie Freda, who cries also. She glares accusingly at him, and Hoseok recoils, knowing she is looking at God, not at him. _Fix it,_ she snarls. _Fix it. He deserves a second chance, he deserves it!_

 _There are some things outside of my ability to give, Erzulie Freda,_ God says, with no small amount of sadness and Hoseok feels his knees start to buckle when Jeongguk tries to smile, when the expression crumples on his face and he bends to kiss Sanghyuk's pale lavender lips, arm cradling his head.

“S'okay, Hyuk,” he whimpers, smoothing his hair and rocking their bodies back and forth like a mother and her child. “I gotcha. I gotcha, babe,” his voice dissolves into muffled crying as he holds Sanghyuk's face to his neck and embraces him tighter as though to warm him. “I've got you,” he whispers, over and over and over and Hoseok has never felt so helpless as he does in this moment. “I ain't gonna le'go.”

 _Lets make a deal, you and I._ It is a man who speaks. A man in a black suit with a face like a skull, standing over Jeongguk and Erzulie Freda. She looks back at him.

 _At what price,_ she asks. He shrugs and shakes his head, always so pragmatic in his dealings.

 _It's funny,_ he says, resting his hand on her shoulder. _Death resets everything, you know. Your luck, your chances. Curses are wiped off the slate._ Erzulie Freda looks down at Jeongguk, and at Sanghyuk, and she puts a hand down over Sanghyuk's heart. There is the sound of chains falling away and at the same time Sanghyuk heaves in a breath so loud that everyone turns to look at him. He jerks upright, looking around in panic before his eyes settle on Jeongguk and, even as Erzulie Freda and the Baron fade away, he drags him into his arms.

“I heard you,” he says. “I heard you Jonny I heard you callin' n'I wasn't gonna leave you, Jonny I promised, I heard you callin' me n'I felt it, I felt—oh god, _I love you._ ”

Jeongguk's face is pressed into Sanghyuk's shoulder, only his read and teary eyes visible, but Hoseok knows he is smiling. His body gives a pulse and he feels the blessing of God flow over all, a shimmer of light, happiness and faith.

So there is only this: Jimin stands over Yoongi, who holds Hongbin. Beside them, Babs is a shimmering, cosmic blue and Yoongi sparkles with starlight, a magic long repressed by chains around his wrists he hadn't even known were there. He looks up at Jimin, who carefully nudges his hand toward Hongbin's bloodied face. _Go on,_ he seems to say, and Yoongi takes a deep, deep breath.

Slides his fingers over blood and skin and gore. Bites into his lip to keep from crying.

There is nothing.

There is nothing.

 

There is nothing.

 

 

There is nothing.

 

 

 

And then:

“Yoongi,” Hongbin's voice is the weakest breath. “There you are, baby.”

“Bean,” Yoongi pants out, dragging him in tight then relaxing his grip when Hongbin starts coughing weakly. “Oh, god I'm sorry, I'm sorry—oh jesus, Hongbin, oh god.”

“Y'gotta... Stop takin' the Lords name in vain,” Hongbin laughs, his voice low. “E's... E's standin' ri'there, y'know.”

“Yeah,” Yoongi nods, wiping some of the blood away from Hongbin's face. “Yeah, I. I saw him, Bean.”

“S'ee gonna take care'a your pitch,” Hongbin asks, his smile mild and teasing. “S'you c'n. Stop suckin' at singin?”

“Fuck you, asshole,” Yoongi hiccups, and it sounds more like _I love you_ than anything else. Hoseok looks around them at the magic that flows from Jimin's being: green streaks of grass and wildflowers and trees, the rot of the ring of birch that contained this entire place. This entire evil. The Maw is closed. The Gate destroyed, and it is Taehyung who speaks, helping Seokjin to his feet and looking out at all of them.

“So,” he says, clearing his throat. “So uh. S'over, right? S'gone?” There are weak nods, coughs and groans of pain and Taehyung, because he is simply himself, nods and puts his bruised hands on his hips and asks, trying to sound sure of himself, “Who's... Who's hungry? I'll, I'll make dinner.”

A chorus of teary laughter, groans and the settling feeling of _it's over, oh god it's over, we're all right. We're all right._

_It's over, and we're still here._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look.  
> LOOK.  
> i'm so done with this honestly it fought me so hard at the end i want to just. fuckin. throw it off a goddamned cliff i'm the worst at writing action and i have a lot of trouble resolving long plots like this, i always fuck up the finish  
> there will be a brief epilogue, eventually--when i feel like i want to look at this again. x_x


End file.
